


Letters from Sussex

by sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)



Series: Letters from Sussex [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aborted Blow Jobs, Additional Trigger Warnings Listed in Chapter Notes, Aftercare, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bathing/Washing, Co-Bathing, Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Early Retirementlock, Emotional Growth, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epistolary, Eventual Happy Ending, First Kiss, Fluff, Guaranteed happy ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Intimacy, Light Dom/sub, Love Confessions, M/M, Major Illness, Massage, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Phone Sex, Post-Season/Series 03, Recovery, Rimming, Sexting, Soft Dom John, Some Gut-Wrenching Angst, Sub Sherlock, Tender Sex, Tenderness, This is not a BDSM fic by any stretch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 22:07:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 43
Words: 32,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8226268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/pseuds/sussexbound
Summary: In the wake of the Mary/Moriarty affair, John and Sherlock have fallen out, and are living apart. But Sherlock isn't content with this state of affairs--not one bit. He's tired of dancing around the obvious. The wooing of John Watson starts now!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Letters from Sussex 苏塞克斯的来信](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9469172) by [BCKURTFA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BCKURTFA/pseuds/BCKURTFA)
  * Inspired by [Letters from Sussex - Draft](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4147626) by [sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/pseuds/sussexbound). 



> Please note that as of Oct. 6th, 2016 this story is undergoing an extensive rewrite. As a result, this version of the story is the new/main one. The orginal version (now marked draft) can be found [HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4147626/chapters/9356727). 
> 
> Many of the epistolary chapters from the first draft will remain the same, but this version will **not** be epistolary only. The E rating will definitely apply in the later chapters of the new version, because I will be rolling chapters that were previously in[The Appendices](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5173910/chapters/11918915) into the new version of the story.

20/06/15

 

John,

I suspect that the contents of this letter will surprise you.  If they are unwelcome, then I hope you will forgive me, that you will count it as just one more horrible misstep in a long line of errors I have made when it comes to you and me.

If you knew how many times over the last six months I have sat down to write these words, how many drafts, how many deleted docs, crumpled and burned scraps of paper I have gone through to finally get this letter to you, I think that you would forgive me any bumbling.  I am quite hopeless at these things, you see.  Well--you know that well enough by now.  But, by your own admission I am your best friend and you are mine, and I hope that is enough to carry us through if this all goes wrong.

So I’ll just jump to it, shall I?

I want you to come home.  And by home, I mean I want you here, in East Dean & Friston, with me. 

I know, too, that we did not part well.  You are angry at me for everything that occurred with Mary, and Moriarty, and my brother.  You are angry that there were things I kept from you, once again, in an admittedly ill-conceived attempt to keep you safe.  And you are right.  I was wrong.  I shouldn’t have lied, shouldn’t have kept secrets.  I shouldn’t have tried to play the hero. 

I know it is futile to claim that I did it all for you.  That would be a lie.  I didn’t, John.  I didn’t do it all for you.  I did it mostly for me, because the thought of losing you was more than I could bear.  And isn’t that just like life, though, that I’ve learned my lesson too late, and after everything I’ve lost you anyway.

I know London is your great love.  I saw how you used to champ at the bit when we were away in little villages for cases.  You love the hustle and bustle.  You feed off the energy a large metropolis provides.  I know, too, that you have your job and the flat in Acton.  You have a life there.  But forgive me, John, it seems a very lonely one.

I’ve never known you to be someone who relishes living alone.  I have laid up nights these last months, thinking of you alone there in that echoing flat.   You are living with nothing but ghosts and not very friendly ones either. 

Greg tells me you have stopped meeting him for a pint Fridays.  Molly says she hasn’t had a single text from you since I moved here.  Your sister texts me, now, for news.  I have nothing to tell her.  They are understandably concerned.  They said you did this before—when I was dead.

Truthfully, I am quite alone here, as well.  Yes, there are the beehives to tend (Janine did nothing with them, and they’re in a horrible state), and a garden to try and wrestle back into submission.  Though I seem to have a brown thumb where that is concerned (I wonder if you might fare better).  There are also, unexpectedly, cases—small, wearisome, domestic-type affairs, but needs must, I suppose. 

It is best to make a decent first impression in a new locale, yes?I’ve helped the elderly Trawlaney sisters track down the lad who has been snatching their prized hens, and the mayor’s wife was exceedingly grateful for my assistance in determining who was thrice weekly decorating the doors of the city hall with graffiti. 

The cases are simple, but distracting enough.  However, they are also exceedingly boring without you here to keep me company and crack jokes at the client’s expense (I admit sometimes I have kept you from meals on cases just because it makes you that much more fractious and I do love it when your hackles are up). 

I miss you.  Every time I step out the door on a case and you aren't there beside me, every time the bee colony makes some small gain and there's no one to tell, every time I forget how much lamb needs to go into the shepherd's pie.  I miss you constantly.  Do you miss me too?

And this brings me to the other point of this letter.  Or, rather, the main point (yes, I’ve been a coward, and have written all the easy bits first).  I miss you because my life is empty without you in it, John.  I thought you knew that.  Perhaps you do and it is not enough to motivate you to leave the life you have eked out for yourself there.  If that is the case, then I concede to your choice.  I would not have you unhappy.

From the moment we met I feel that I have done nothing but lead you from one unhappiness to the next.  Which, believe me, was the very opposite of what I intended.  But I was so taken in, so overwhelmed, so enraptured by you from the very first moment we met, that I was wholly compromised.  I could think of nothing else but having you.  Just with me, John.  Do you understand?  I require nothing but that.  Just you—here—with me.  I dim without you.  I can't think, can't concentrate.

Everything here is sunshine this time of year.  I wake to the sound of birdsong and the distant whisper of the surf, and I look around the small bedroom I am occupying on the second floor, all golden-lit with morning light (it faces East - most unpractical), and I think of you in London.  And whenever I think of you there, all I see is grey.

Are you happy there?  Truly happy?  I can’t imagine you are.

Come home to me and I can promise you the following:

  1. Cases.
  2. Fine weather, at least in the summer and early autumn months.
  3. A garden that desperately needs your attention.
  4. No body parts in the refrigerator.I’ve an outbuilding with electricity here, and I’ve put a fridge and freezer there for those purposes.
  5. A dog.Do you like dogs?I’ve got a lovely Setter/Lab cross since I’ve come here.His name is Gladstone.
  6. If you would like a surgery job, then you may have that too.They are looking for a second GP at the village clinic.
  7. And lastly, me.However you like, whatever you need, you may have me, John.



You do have me.  You always have—body and soul.

 

Yours,

Sherlock


	2. Chapter 2

_Six months earlier…_

* * *

It shouldn’t be like this.  It should never have been like this. 

There is snow in John’s hair.  It sits between silver strands shimmering, quivering with the trembling of his body.  He’s cold.  He should have wrapped up warmer.  He shouldn’t be here.  None of them should be here in this silent, near-abandoned graveyard, but they are and it’s over—everything—over.

“I can’t do this.”

Sherlock feels something go cold inside him at John’s words.He doesn’t look at him.He can’t.He stares down at twin graves, both marked with the name Watson.He thinks about his brother, growing cold beneath his desperately, probing fingers a few weeks earlier, the gurgling in his lungs, the light fading from his eyes, all the things left unsaid.He thinks of a flat gone, nothing but ash, and of Mrs. Hudson taken along with it. He thinks of the lies, the omissions that brought them to where they are in this moment.They are a weight too heavy to carry.

There is so much still unsaid between Sherlock and John.  Words that need speaking, but seemed trapped somewhere deep in the darkest, most sacredly guarded parts of both their hearts.  But John is speaking now, and—it’s horrible.

“I can’t do this, Sherlock. I can’t.  I—I want you to go.  I can’t see you for awhile.”  He sucks in a sharp breath, like the words hurt as they come out, like they’re trying to suffocate him.  “Maybe—maybe a long while.”

“How long?”

“Just go.”  John’s voice breaks when he says it.  It’s all he has left, and so Sherlock does.  He understands, after all.  Sometimes you are so broken that ‘alone’ is the only refuge you have left.

He turns and walks away.


	3. Chapter 3

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings:** Brief suicidal thoughts.

_Five months earlier…_

* * *

 

There were no good-byes.  That was the hardest part of leaving London.  There was no one to say good-bye to. 

He’d seen Molly and Greg on the last, mediocre case he’d helped the Met to solve.  He’d mentioned leaving then.  They were wrapped up in one another.  They wouldn’t miss him.

John had not texted, or called, or made any attempt at contact in weeks.

Sherlock was tired of living out of posh hotels.  He was exhausted by the settling of Mrs. Hudson’s estate, of his brother’s, the string of lawyers, his parents high emotion, tears, and tears, and more tears until there was only icy resignation—overwhelming, all the time, too much. 

He wants John. 

He _needs_ John. 

He knows that now—but too late. 

It feels permanent, this parting.

It’s unbearable.

The bleak, frigid, February rains are blurring the brown countryside racing by outside the train window.  It was lunacy, this move.  But he couldn’t bear to find another place in London, to know that a quick ride by tube or cab could have him at John’s doorstep in a moment (on his knees, begging). 

And then there was the siren song of old habits… 

It had been tempting, almost too much.

He’d wanted to die ( _wants to die_ ).

But he won’t do that to John, not again.  He’s already done enough.

So he’s leaving, and he’s starting again.  He’s done it before, made himself anew.  He supposes he can again.  It almost seems like too much, this time, though.  Perhaps he is getting old.

The estate agent is beaming when his train pulls into the Eastbourne station—ginger, eating disorder, twice divorced, one child at home.  This sale has been a boon. 

She drives him from Eastbourne to the cottage in Friston, and doesn’t linger.  He must look a sight.  She’s usually irritatingly gregarious.  At least she seemed so via text and phone.  But, she hands him the keys, wishes him the best, and then turns and leaves him standing on the stoop in the icy, driving rain.

It seems fitting, somehow...


	5. Chapter 5

25/06/15

 

John, 

In hindsight the previous letter may not have been the best idea.  Forgive me if I was too forthcoming, too presumptuous.  I hope you are well and happy.  I will admit I am a little worried, as I have not heard from you since your texts the day you received my last letter.  I hope that you will at least write, or text me to let me know that you receive this.

London is getting an unseasonable amount of rain at the moment.  How dull it must be.

The garden here is overrun by weeds.  I attempted to tackle the task of clearing it, but in the end was only able to manage three of the vegetable boxes in the kitchen garden before the sun got the better of me.  You are right.  I should wear a hat and sunscreen.  I had a headache for a full 24 hours, and got a sunburn so severe I am still struggling to wear clothes.  I have decided to let nature have it’s way with the garden.  Clearly, it is a battle I’m not fit for (much as it pains me to admit).

The bees are faring much better.  I think the hive is well and established now.  I was worried for a week or two that the queen would be rejected, but things seem to be buzzing now (that pun was unforgivable, I know.  I’m sorry).

Gladstone is refusing to interact with me.  He had to take a trip to the vet two days ago, for that most unfortunate of surgeries.  Now he sits in the corner by the hearth and glares daggers at me.  He did let me pet his head and scratch behind his ears for a few minutes last night, though.  I think the peace offering of chicken and rice for dinner may have been what did it.  I hope we are making headway.

Oh, and there’s been a suspicious death.  Old Mr. Thornton’s night nurse was found dead in the armchair beside his bed, and according to the local gossips he was young, attractive, and fit as a fiddle.  I may wander down and have a little chat with the local constabulary.  See if they could use some assistance.  My reputation has preceded me, it seems.  They may be amenable to me helping out now and again.

Well, that’s all the news there is here.  I hope this finds you well.

 

Yours,

Sherlock

 


	6. Chapter 6

**John Watson** <jwatson57@gmail.com>9:34 PM

to Sherlock

 

Sherlock,

I don’t have long to chat, but I wanted to let you know that I got your letter.  I am well.  Please don’t worry about me, or feel that you need to keep corresponding.

Oh, and wear bloody sunscreen.  How many times do I have to tell you?!

John


	7. Chapter 7

**Sherlock Holmes** <sholmes129@gmail.com>9:58 PM

to John

 

John,

I am glad you are well. 

I don’t feel as though I _have to_ continue corresponding with you.  I _want to_.  Or was that you attempting to be subtle?  I never can quite tell… 

No.  That’s a lie, and I’ve promised you no more lies.  That _was_ you trying to brush me off, wasn’t it.  Well, if you want me to stop corresponding, then you’ll have to be more clear.

The sunburn is fading, you’ll be pleased to know.  Unfortunately it has been replaced with a series of acid burns from a rather unfortunate scientific/investigative mishap.  The kitchen table is also rather worse for wear.  I did go to the local surgery to have them tended to, as they were rather more than the first aid kit would handle.

I must say, Dr. Phillips did not take the kind of care I’ve come to expect.  They could desperately use someone with your skill here.

Gladstone is over his sulk.  Though he did make sure to have the last word.  When I got home from the surgery yesterday he had got into my sock index and not only scattered socks all over the house, but also tried to ingest a few.  Of course, he couldn’t be considerate enough to eat them in pairs.  No!  Had to go and leave me with a half dozen lonely singles. 

He doesn’t seem to like being left on his own.  Is there such a thing as a nanny for dogs?  I think he needs more consistent human companionship.

I’ve been exploring the village a little more as there’s not much else to do.  There is a lovely tea emporium here.  There was one blend, in particular, that I thought you might like.  I may have to send you some.  Or, perhaps you would rather come for a visit and save me the postage?

Well, I suppose I should go and take my antibiotics and apply another layer of salve to these burns.  Take care of yourself, John.  Promise me you’ll do that, at least.

 

Yours,

Sherlock


	8. Chapter 8

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

03/07/15

 

Sherlock,

I don’t really do this often—write proper letters, I mean.  I think the letters I sent home to Harry while I was deployed to A. was the last time.  Well—the last time I _sent_ anyone a proper letter.  I’ve written plenty I’ve never sent. 

They were all to you. 

You were dead.  What did it matter?

And then, suddenly, you weren’t. 

I forgave you for that, didn’t I.  At least I thought I did.  But, the problem is I’m not sure I’ll ever _really_ be able to fully forgive you, and quite frankly, I don’t know how you can expect me to.  You seem to just assume that I’ll forgive you for anything and everything.  Well, you’re wrong.  I won’t.  I can’t.  That’s finished. 

Because, that’s not how friends are with one another, Sherlock.  Friends don’t pretend to be dead for two years, no matter the reason.  Friends don’t make friends watch them jump to their death, skull cracked open like a melon, blood on the pavement, eyes staring blankly, empty, gone…

Friends don’t keep secrets like the secrets you kept from me about Mary.  Friends don’t lie, and lie, and fuck up so horribly that they contribute to the death of their best friend’s child.  Friends don’t keep their friends in the dark, and they don’t ask their friends to walk into danger’s path on blind faith.  Friends don’t use friends, they don’t manipulate friends.  Friends don’t try to hurt friends by PRETENDING to be dating other people, fucking other people. 

You say you’re mine (Body and soul?  What am I even supposed to do with a declaration like that?!).  But, you’re not mine.  You’re nobody’s, Sherlock, because you don’t let yourself be.  You’re not like that.  You don’t feel things that way.  And besides, people don’t really belong to one another like that.  We’re all alone in this, when it comes down to it, and you’re a fool if you think any differently.

I want you to stop communicating with me.  Just stop. 

I don’t want to talk to you, don’t you understand?  I don’t know if I even want to ever see you again.  Every time I think about everything you’ve done I want to make you pay, make you feel just the slightest inkling of what you’ve made me feel, and I…  God help me, I care about you too much to want that, really.  So please, for my sake, leave me alone.  Don’t give me anything else to regret.

Do you have any idea how terrified I am that maybe I hate you?  Do you?  Do you have any idea how much I loved you once?  No.  No, of course you don’t.

But, if you ever had any love of any kind for me, if you were ever my friend, then I am begging you to let me be.

 

John


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings:** Animal Death (puppies), suicidal ideation.

_Three and a half months earlier…_

* * *

Spring’s a long time coming.  Mid-March’s bland grey suits Sherlock’s mood perfectly.  It feels like solidarity, like the world understands and is just waiting, like maybe if he just ends it all, maybe if he unburdens the earth with his wasteful presence, the sun will finally deem to shine again. 

( _Ridiculous sentiment.  Illogical._ )  He’s spiralling again and he knows it. 

He misses cocaine.

 _No_.

London.

He misses having things to occupy him.

 _No_.

( _John—you miss John_ )

“You will stay for supper, won’t you, Mr. Holmes?”  Sian McGregor is plump, blonde, rosy-cheeked, and thrilled that he’s managed to figure out where their missing sheep have been disappearing to. 

The house is fragrant with roast chicken.  He should stay.  That’s what people do.

“That would be lovely.  Thank you.”

The back door flies open and Hugh McGregor blusters into the warm womb of the kitchen on the tail of a frigid gale and the bright tang of impending sleet.  He holds a full, sodden, burlap sack in one meaty hand. 

“Found this in the pond.  Bloody Adams again.  Saw his bike roundin' the bend just as I came out’ the trees.  I swear to Christ if he doesn’t fix that bloody bitch of his, I’m going to go over there and do it for him.  Quick, give me a knife.”

The bundle is set by the warm hearth and then sliced open to reveal what at first glance appears to be a copper, fur stole.  But then McGregor starts to prod gently at it and his wife gasps, and clucks, and drops to her knees beside it on the cold stone floor and Sherlock realises that what he is really looking at is a small pile of drowned puppies.

McGregor pick’s one up and rubs it a little, as he lifts a hand to it’s snout and presses one large finger to it’s chest.  “This one is gone.  Check the others.”

Sherlock stands back, watching.  He’s frozen to the spot, it seems.  He should help.  He should.  He should help.  Instead…

“Were they in the water long?”

“Long enough.”

“Dead,” Sian pronounces, setting a second pup aside.

One after one.

Sherlock feels lightheaded.  He should have eaten more.  He doesn’t remember with no one there to remind him.

There is a small squeak from the sack.  And then somehow Sherlock is on the floor too, has the animal cupped in his hands while it shudders, and shakes, and whines piteously.

“The only one in the lot.  Just look at that…” Hugh says.  “It’s yours now, Mr. Holmes.  No question.  He likes ‘ya.”

“Unlikely.”

Mrs. McGregor laughs out loud and then clamps a hand over her mouth. 

“They’re too young to be away from their mother,” he hears himself say.

“Indeed they are, Mr. Holmes.  I have a bitch with a litter.  She’ll take him until he’s weaned.  ‘Bout two weeks more, then he’s yours if you’d like.  Adam’s bitch is a setter.  Not sure about the sire.”

“It’s cold.”

“That water’s just one step away from ice this time of year.  It’ll appreciate the warmth of the fire.  Best to stay here until supper’s on the table.”

He is vaguely aware of the McGregors looking at one another in that knowing way that long-married couples have.  He’s doing this wrong.  He’s let too much show, but it’s difficult with dogs and he’s too tired, too hungry, too complete unmoored to manage the appropriate callous disinterest.

It’s helpless, this little thing.  It’s helpless and he’s helping.  It nearly died, but he’s warming it and it’s calming, and he did that.

The pup looks up at him, blinks, sneezes.  He feels his mouth stretch into a smile.  How long has it been?  Long enough that it feels foreign.

It will be good, possibly.  It will be good to feel like he’s making a difference, saving lives again, instead of ending them.  It will be good to have someone (some thing) to care about.

Perhaps it is too soon for hopeless resignation.  Perhaps there’s still a chance he could make things right.  Perhaps he isn’t wholly useless after all.  Perhaps…


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Sherlock Holmes** <sholmes129@gmail.com>1:45 PM

to: _John_

 

John,

I’ve changed my mind about East Sussex.  Terrible, awful place.  We’ve had nothing but rain for a week, and I’m sick, and Gladstone has pissed all over the bedclothes twice because getting downstairs to let him out feels like too much, and then he sulks because he feels guilty, and then I feel guilty for not letting him out.  I haven’t even been able to get out and check the bees.  What if the hives have flooded?!

I admit, I did go out the first day.  The rains were so heavy on Monday.  But I got drenched to the skin, and I think that perhaps made me even more ill than I was before.  If you were here, no doubt it would have earned me a scolding.  I do miss your scolding sometimes… 

But, I knew better, and I’m sorry.  I’m paying for it now and I suppose it serves me right.  I was just so worried about the colonies.  They’ve gotten so well established this summer and the winds were high Sunday night.  I was worried the hives may have blown over.  I can’t see them all clearly from the kitchen window due to the overgrown state of the garden.

It is sunny in London now, I see.  I hope you are getting out to the park to enjoy it.  Perhaps you should take a few days off from the surgery and enjoy the lovely weather while you have it?

Oh, and I resolved the case with Mr. Thornton’s night nurse, did I tell you.  Turns out the man was an illegitimate son of Mr. Thornton’s and was trying to blackmail him.  Mr. Thornton wasn’t so helpless after all, it seems.  He was spry and cognisant enough to poison the nurse, at any rate!  Senior citizens these days!  I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking that I will probably be still blowing up the kitchen (which really only happened once, John), when I’m that age.  You’re probably right.

Janine came ‘round on Tuesday just to see what I’d done with the place, but I sent her off straight way, again.  No need for her to get sick.  She’s staying in Birling Gap with a bloke she met on some internet dating site.  She brought him along as well.  He seemed acceptable enough.  She was looking well, as always.

Are you well?  I do hope so.  You could send me photographic proof, you know.  I’ve not set eyes on you since January.  You never update your blog anymore.  No one knows what you’re up to.

James Sholto texted me yesterday.  That was a surprise.  He was afraid you’d died.  He’d seen everything on the news about the Moriarty affair, and Mary and then the blog went dark.  He said he’s been emailing you, but with no response.  He was deathly afraid you’d done yourself some harm.  I assured him, you were alive and well.  You are well, aren’t you John? 

I assume you are attending Greg and Molly’s wedding in October?  I will be coming to London for it.  I hope you don’t mind.  Perhaps we might have a little chat then.  If you would rather I not, I will leave it be.  Just let me know what you prefer.

Well, I’ve prattled on enough.

Don’t keep too much to yourself, John.  People miss you.  I miss you.

 

Yours,

Sherlock


	13. Chapter 13

 

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

**John Watson** <jwatson57@gmail.com> 7:23PM 

to: _Sherlock_

 

Sherlock,

I’ve decided to take your advice and take a week off from the clinic.  I have things that need doing around the flat and it might be nice to take in some of the good weather, as you say.

As for Greg and Molly’s wedding—you know they are going to seat us together, right?  I mean there’s no getting around that.  And both of us are going to go, of course, so…  I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we get there, okay? 

I need to admit something to you.  I’ve read that letter you sent me back in June so many times the paper’s starting to get soft around the edges.  It makes me so angry.  I don’t know why and I don’t know why I keep reading it knowing that it does, but I can’t stop. 

You said things in that letter that I’s been hoping for years you would say—back in the old days, before everything fell apart.  You probably didn’t know that, did you.  You didn’t know how much I cared then.  I would have done anything for you.  I would have died for you.  I would have rather died abroad, somewhere, working together to take down Moriarty’s network, than watch you jump from that bloody roof. 

I did die. 

I died when you died.  Did you know that?

You miss me?  The thought of losing me is more than you can bear?  You were enraptured (?!!?), and wholly compromised from the moment we met?  You can think of nothing else but having me—with you?  You dim when I’m not there?  I have always had you, body and soul?

How?  How can you really mean any of these things? 

From the moment we met?  No, Sherlock.  No!  You said—you said, ‘married to my work’.  You couldn’t fathom why I would care what people thought of you, or why I would care that Irene was toying with your heart.  You thought that caring for people was a disadvantage.  Hell, you didn’t even notice when used to go off on a conference or something, for a week.  I could have up and moved out and you wouldn’t have even noticed for a good month.  I accepted those things about you, because—well, because I didn’t have a choice.  I wanted to be with you and that is who you are, so I accepted it.

So now you’re saying, what?  That all that was a lie, an act?  Why?  I don’t understand any of this, Sherlock.  I need you to explain it to me, okay.  I need you to be completely honest.

I hope you are feeling better.  If not, don’t forget your promise.  I want you off to the clinic tomorrow.  I will call and have a doctor sent to you if I have to!

 

John


	15. Chapter 15

**Sherlock Holmes** <sholmes129@gmail.com>8:37 PM

to: _John_

 

John,

Not a lie or act—well, not purposeful.  I find I struggle to understand these feelings myself, so I beg your patience.  I will try to answer your questions the best I can.

The night at Angelo’s—‘ _married to my work_ ’.  That was a mistake. 

Can you understand what meeting you was like?  It was like a hurricane, a supernova.  It upended and turned my whole life inside-out in seconds. 

I knew the moment you walked into that lab with Mike, that I needed you in my life.  I took one look at you and I knew.  You probably want to know how.  I don’t know, John.  That’s the honest truth.  I don’t.  It was instinct.  Something bone-deep that hit me right in the gut and stayed there, burning, until you stepped out of the cab and onto the pavement in front of 221b the next day. 

I worked so hard to be everything you wanted, but I never expected you to respond the way you did.  No one ever had before.  You remember what I told you in that cab ride to the crime scene in Brixton, yes?  Most people _did_ just tell me to piss off.  I never expected you to think I was brilliant.  I was still reeling from that.  And then there was dinner, and you fishing about in regards to my relationship status, and I panicked.  It was not something I had planned for.  There was no script for it.  I wasn’t prepared in the least.

You were fishing, weren’t you?  I know you sort of back-pedalled, but I’m usually right about those things.  At any rate, I thought you were and I panicked. I’m not proud to say it.

Everything about you was amazing.  I didn’t want to ruin it with—well, with whatever nonsense it is people get up to when they’re casually dating another person.  I wanted us to be more than that.  I wanted companionship—a friend.  I wanted someone who would stay.  I needed you to stay, John!

When you showed up in my life, I had just started to really make a life for myself, get out from under my brother’s thumb.  I NEEDED that to work.  I also knew that I wasn’t all that good at going it alone.  I don’t really like people.  You know that, John.  But some people are the exception.  You were an exception and I wanted you so badly to be _the one_ —the one who would put up with me, the one who would stay.

I understand why you’ve decided to live in London now.  I know I’ve hurt you and wronged you, over and over.  You used to think I was this brilliant, amazing creature, like something you might see in a museum under glass.  You needed me to be that, I think.  So, now that I’ve turned out to be nothing more than horribly flawed and hopelessly ordinary, I’ve disappointed you. 

I’ve made mistakes, horrible mistakes.  Those mistakes have ruined your life.  And I wanted to _make_ your life, John, not ruin it.  I wanted to give you everything and be everything that you’ve ever needed or wanted.  And I’m not.  Maybe I can’t be.  I know I have to find a way to accept that, but nothing has ever been this hard and I don’t know how to just let you go.

As to your other points, you are right.  I couldn’t understand when you seemed to care what other people thought of me.  It didn’t affect me.  I didn’t even really affect you.  If people wanted to hate me, let them. 

I suppose that was insensitive of me.  In the end, it was people’s ill opinion that forced me to leave you, after all.  Ah…  I see now.  I see.  I’m sorry, John. 

I am trying to do better.  I have made a real effort here to not alienate myself from the locals.  You would be quite surprised, I think.

You mentioned Adler.  She didn’t toy with my heart, John.  One has to give their heart to someone in order for that person to be able to toy with it and my heart was never, in any way hers, so please, have no concerns on that front.

As for caring being a disadvantage—it is in many ways.  If I didn’t care for you, for instance, I wouldn’t miss you so now.  If I hadn’t been so desperate to please you, perhaps I would have thought clearer, not made the errors I did with Magnussen and your wife.  If hadn’t loved my brother as I did, I wouldn’t have been blind to his conflicting allegiances, or so hurt by his perceived betrayal that I failed to see what was really going on. 

Caring has caused me great disadvantage more than once, but I still care, especially where you are concerned.  I’ve decided that there is nothing for it.  It won’t stop.  It won’t go away.  I don’t want it to.  Even if I never see you again, I don’t want to ever stop caring for you.  I don’t ever want to stop thinking about the fact that you thought me your best friend once, that you told me that you loved me most in the world besides the woman you were about to marry.

And John, I always missed you when you were away.  Did I not notice sometimes?  Did I talk to you when you weren’t there?  Yes.  I did.  But, I did because I couldn’t manage with you not there.  I suppose I’d created a you to hang on to when the real you was absent and sometimes one flowed into the other.  If you were not there, then my mind offered up an illusion that you were.

Those years I was apart from you.I would not have made it through them without that John.You lived in my mind, safe, unchanged, and then you had free run of it, and then you became it, until there was nothing there that was not touched by some part of you.You are tattooed onto my soul.It’s permanent and I carry you with me always.I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, yes John, I meant every word I said in that letter.  I did.  I still do.  I always will.

 

Ever Yours,

Sherlock


	16. Chapter 16

 

 

 

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

 

 

 

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Sherlock Holmes** <sholmes129@gmail.com>8:16 PM

to: _John_

 

John,

I do hope that you didn’t go to the pub alone.  Greg would gladly go with you, or even Mike, I imagine.  I worry, John.  I worry when you drink alone.  You know how you are when you are like this.  You get tetchy and there’s no one there to watch your back.

Do text when you get back.  I won’t sleep until you do.

But, the reason for this email: I want to apologise. 

I didn’t mean to judge you where Mrs. Hudson was concerned.  I only wondered.  It seemed so unlike you. 

Sometimes she felt more like my mother than my own mother (you know how that can be—some people know us better than our own flesh and blood), and you were always so kind to her when we were together.  Perhaps you were a little demanding, a little rude, but so was I and probably more so. 

Still, she doted on you.  Perhaps you didn’t realise that.  She loved you, I think—like a son, and she didn’t understand why you never called.

Is it part and parcel with what you said before, about leaving before people leave you?  I’d left you and you couldn’t bear any more leaving, so you left everyone else before they had the chance?  If so, then I am partially to blame.

When I told you, all those months ago, that I didn’t realise that my ‘death’ would hurt you the way it did, you were understandably angry.  How could I not know?  You were right.  I should have realised, but the sad truth is, I didn’t. 

If I had known that you would bear the weight of my leaving so heavy on your shoulders, I would have found another way, John.  Believe that.  There has not been a moment’s pleasure in any of that for me.  From the moment I truly realised how affected you were, I haven’t had a moment’s reprieve from the regret.

And now I’m going to say some things that will probably make you angry at me, but I’ve wanted to say them for a very long time and I think I owe you an explanation.

What do you think those two years away were for me?  Do you imagine it some cliched and romanticised romp, like those James Bond films you love so much?  It wasn’t.  It was cold, and it was lonely, and there wasn’t a single moment where I didn’t wish you were there with me. 

Many times you were. 

I’ve told you how I carry a version of you in mind.  At first I denied myself the pleasure.  Then, when I finally did weaken, I drown in it like a drug.  In the end I tried to spread it out.  Only when I was at my most alone, my most desperate, would I indulge. 

It helped to imagine you there when I was on the run.  When my life was in danger, I would ask you what to do.  If the pain during some interrogation or another became to much, I would think of you—just your face—the way your eyelashes curled upward and caught the sunlight when you stood in profile, the way your hands looked beside mine on the seat of a cab, how you would wiggle your toes against the carpet by the hearth to warm them after getting back from a late-night case.  I would allow myself to be distracted by all the details of you and it helped immeasurably!

Sometimes at night, sleeping under a clear sky, I would look up and you were there with me.  I liked to think you were safe in London, seeing the same stars.  I liked to think you were there beside me, too.  And I could sleep then, a little, with your steady breathing, the warmth of you next to me.

Everything is easier when we are together, don’t you find?  That is why I have become a bit of a pest on the topic.  It’s not that I don’t respect your need for space.  It’s just that you are always so much better when you are _not_ alone. 

You only crave space when you are fighting the urge to run—to run from life, to run from those who care about you, to run from yourself.  But, you don’t have to run anymore, John.  There’s a home here for you and it’s safe, and it’s warm, and it’s yours, and you may have as much space as you like, if only you will take it here.

Why do this to yourself?  You want to come home, so come.

You may spend every day locked in your room with a book.  I will stay out with the bees all day if you want the house to yourself, or I will stay in the cottage if you want to be in the garden, but you will be here where someone cares enough to see that you are well. 

I have over five years of horrible wrongs to make right.  Let me.  Let me give you this. 

And let me say this.  I am not leaving.  I made you a vow I intend to spend the rest of my life keeping.  I promised you I would always be there for you, and I will be. 

I’m not leaving.  Not unless you tell me to go.

 

Yours,

Sherlock

 


	19. Chapter 19

**John Watson** <jwatson57@gmail.com> 2:37AM 

to: _Sherlock_

 

why r you sayin this things?  you  dont’ no me.  you think so,, but no!

You Dont..

you r my home.  just you.  not janine’s house at the beach.  you.  always u…. only…alwasy

and you could have had me any time. you could have Shelrock.  but you didn't want me.

is not my falt I'm like this.  I've been good.  i try.  and then i just want you once, just a little, and i’m punished .evrything is alway s my fault. nmine.  my fault. for wanting…  jams.  look at james.  u saw.  my fault.  gemma…  you—that wasn’t ur fault, sherlock, it was mine.  i …

Christ I'm sorry.  So sorry…

Fuck… Ur so beautiful, how do they do it.>?  how do they not love you?  everyone .. everyone must love u so much.  u were made for it—loving.  but not for me.  i ruin  every one i love.  you’ll see. 

‘m always punished.

iii love you soo o much!!!  please.  i need u safe.  don’t

jst don’t luv me.i love you to much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And for people who have reading disabilities, or for whom English is a second language, and can't understand a word of John's drunken ramblings. Here's a proper, sober man's translation:
> 
>  
> 
> Why are you saying these things? You don't know me. You think so--but, no.
> 
> You don't.
> 
> You are my home--just you--not the house you bought from Janine. You--always you. Only, always...
> 
> And, you could have had me anytime. You could have, Sherlock, but you didn't want me.
> 
> It's not my fault I'm like this. I've been good. I try. And then I just want you once, just a little, and I’m punished. It's always my fault--mine--my fault for wanting. James, look at James! You saw--my fault. Gemma…? That wasn't your fault, Sherlock. It was mine. I...
> 
> Christ I'm sorry. So sorry…
> 
> Fuck… You're so beautiful. How do they do it? How do they not love you? Everyone--everyone must love you so much. You were made for it--for loving. But, not for me. I ruin everyone I love. You'll see.
> 
> I'm always punished.
> 
> I love you so much!!! Please, I need you safe. Don't--just don't love me. I love you too much.


	20. Chapter 20

 

 

 

 


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Triggers: Mention of suicidal thoughts in the past.

**John Watson** <jwatson57@gmail.com> 11:58AM 

to: _Sherlock_

 

Sherlock,

I don’t even know what to say.  I guess starting with a huge apology would be most appropriate.  Christ, I am SO sorry about the email, and the texts last night after I got back from the pub.  I honestly don’t even remember sending them.  I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that I would prefer if you ignored some 99% of what I said.  I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.

After I finished throwing up this morning, and then drinking a near pot-full of coffee, I checked my phone and wanted to throw up all over again.  I’m sorry.  Really.  Just—please delete however much of that you need to.  You can do that, right, just delete stuff you don’t need?

I guess I should also say that I’m sorry about the way I went off on you about Mrs. Hudson.  It wasn’t fair.  She was like a mother to you, as you say, and it’s only understandable you would be curious and concerned about why I didn’t even so much as ring her in two years time. 

Listen, you have to understand that this is difficult for me— _you_ , like this.  I mean, I knew you were fond of her (you nearly killed a man for laying a finger on her once), but this side of you, where you understand and care that her feelings were hurt, that she might have felt lonely and abandoned by me…  I don’t know what to do with that.  I feel like I don’t know who you are anymore.

I believe you when you say you would do things differently now, if you were faced with the kind of situation Moriarty cooked up on the roof of Bart’s all those years ago.  I believe that you wouldn’t abandon me like you did then.  Well, sometimes I think I believe it, and then others I still tell myself to not be a fool. 

You’ve essentially told me, if I’m understanding you correctly, that the _you_ I knew those first 18 months, was different from the _you_ underneath, and that you didn’t show me that other _you_ , because why?  That’s what I don’t get, I guess.  Why? 

I know you don’t really get on with people.  I understand that.  Christ, I hate people most of the time!  That’s why I originally trained to be a surgeon and hate being a GP.  You have to interact with people more often as a GP.  When you’re a surgeon they’re unconscious most of the time.  Much better!  So, I get that, okay.  But it was me, Sherlock—not some client, or some bloke on the street—it was me!  And you’ve said that I was special from the start, so why hide this _you_ (the real _you_?) from me? 

You need to explain that to me, okay.  Because I think that’s the thing that’s bothering me the most right now.  And—well, to be honest, it’s actually hurting quite a bit too.  It’s like you didn’t trust me.  Why?  I would have done anything for you.  All I wanted was the slightest indication that you were human, that you might want me as a friend, want me to stay in your life, let me—let me look after you.  And not just the cooking, or making sure that you slept now and again, or tending to your scrapes and bruises.  Not just that.  I wanted you to let me look after you the way a friend looks after a friend.  All that stuff, I find hard to talk about.  You don’t need to talk about it, always, you know.  Sometimes you just need to do it.  But, I never thought it was welcome. 

If I expressed concern that the press might throw you under the bus, then you just brushed me off.  If I tried to make sure you’d eaten, you’d snap at me to stop fussing.  If I tried to see if you were okay, like with the Adler thing, you just ignored me.  And then you left me, and I knew for sure that I had never been enough, never been anything to you at all, and the worst of it was, even then, even knowing that I wasn’t enough to keep you wanting to live, I still…  I still loved you, okay.

I couldn’t make it stop.  And it fucked me up.  I was really bad for a really long time.  I hardly remember that first year.  I think I spent most of it at work, or drunk on the couch.  And after a good year and a half of that Ella started to insist that I move on.  So I did.  But, I knew it was just getting by. 

Mary showed up then and she was so fucking good at what she did.  It still makes me sick to think that I was that pathetic, that I was so far gone that I fell for everything she laid out—hook, line and sinker.  But I needed distraction, and by that point it was either that or going back to how I was before I met you, and I couldn’t go back to that.  It would have ended with me putting the muzzle of a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger.

So tell me, if you love me so much why did you never trust me enough to let me see the real you?

Oh, and for the record, you and I should have a proper chat about what really happened out there those two years.  I know it must have been dangerous, working to dismantle Moriarty’s network, but you and I have never really shied away from danger.  I guess I figured that there was an element of enjoyment for you. 

I won’t lie.  It’s nice to know I was missed.  I mean, I’m not relishing in your discomfort, but—well, I guess I’m just glad you missed me.

That being said, you mentioned some stuff that has me a little concerned, too.  You mentioned ‘the pain from some interrogation or another becoming too much’.  What was that about?!  What else haven’t you told me, huh?  And why haven’t you?

In closing, I’m going to say something you shouldn’t get used to hearing: You were right.

_Seriously, don’t get used to it._

Right about what, you’re probably wondering?  Well—when you said I was running and that’s why I’ve been wanting space.

Yeah, I can own that.  I am running.  And you know what, I still need that space.  I know I texted last night that I was ready to come home, but come light of day, I just don’t feel that I am, Sherlock.  I’d like to suggest something, though.  You tell me if it’s okay.

Firstly, I’d like to keep this up—these emails, and letters, and texts.  I’d like to be consistent with it.  Once a day if we can.  I kind of need it.  I look forward to it.  So yeah, I would like to keep doing this.

Secondly, when you come to London for Greg and Molly’s wedding in about eight weeks, I’d like you to stay here with me.  Let’s see how it goes, yeah?

After that, we’ll see…

This isn’t about you anymore, Sherlock, okay.  I mean, I’m not staying away because I’m angry at you.  I’m still confused and I’m still hurt by a lot of things, but you seem to be okay with talking about it all now, and if that continues to be the case then I think I will get all those questions answered, and I can close that part of our life together and get on with better times ahead.  I really do want that.

Mostly, I still need this distance for me, to work out why I feel some of the stuff I’m feeling, or even figure out what I’m feeling.  I know that doesn’t make much sense.  Most of the time it doesn’t make any sense to me. 

This is really embarrassing, and I will kill you if you ever breathe a word of it to anyone, but what I said last night about being scared, is true.  I am.  I’m scared of what’s happening between us.  I’m scared of what it might mean and of the words we’ve both said to one another.  I’m scared of what I’m feeling.  And you’ve got to believe me when I say, _I don’t want to be_.

When I come home to you, I don’t want to be scared anymore.  You deserve better than that and I care about you too much to expect you to have to deal with that.  So, can you give me this time and this space?  Does the plan sound okay?

 

Yours,

John


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Triggers: Passing, non-graphic mention of torture and dissociation. Passing mention of drug-use.

**Sherlock Holmes** <sholmes129@gmail.com>1:13 PM

to: _John_

 

John,

The plan is more than acceptable. 

I must be perfectly honest, I would love you here now.  I miss you constantly, and with an intensity which rivals what I felt when I was away those two years.  It surprised me, when I first moved here.  I suppose I knew what I felt, but I hadn’t realised just how profoundly I felt it. 

That being said, if settling some things within yourself before you come home is important to you, then of course I will wait.

However, I owe you the answers to some very important questions, first, don’t I…  Foremost on your mind was this: _“If you love me so much, why did you never trust me enough to let me see the real you?”_

Simply put, I didn’t think you wanted the real me. 

No one else ever had.  As a child I was constantly reprimanded for strong displays of emotion.  Punished for them, more often than not.  Mycroft was the only one able to handle me and you saw what his solution was.  Shut off.  Don’t feel.  It was always easier for him than me, but I did try!

At Cambridge it was my brain that got me friends.  Well—I say friends…  It won me some companionship.  No one wants to befriend a boy who’s always crying, do they John.  I’d been knocked down for that more than once as a child.  So, I worked hard at being more clever than everyone else, and it was easier.  I was mocked sometimes, but people kept their fists to themselves (mostly).

It doesn’t come naturally to me, though, John—shutting all that off.  In fact, it takes a great deal of effort.  The drugs helped, but I’m not stupid; I know that isn’t a healthy or a sustainable solution.  I would much rather just be myself. 

I had hoped that with you I could be.  However, you seemed disturbed, or at the very least, unsettled by any strong expressions of emotion from me.  You would laugh off any attempts I made at opening up and being more ‘human’, as you call it.  In those rare cases where I was completely fraying at the seams, like the unexpected panic that came with seeing that phantom hound during the Baskerville incident, you seemed determined to force me back into the box of ‘Superhero-Detective’ you so idolised and memorialised on your blog.

I told you once not to make me into a hero.  I meant it.  You do that.  You place the people (or at least the men) you love onto pedestals.  The problem with pedestals is that one always falls off them, and fall I did.  The roof of Bart’s was my fall, I think.  One of them, at least. 

I’ve fallen from grace so many times, John.  And I am likely to again.  I like to think that I am more self-aware now, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t still make mistakes, won’t still hurt you and let you down.  I will fight to make any wrongs I do you right.  I will.  But, I will make mistakes.  And if the only me you can love is a hero you have created, a man who is more than a man, someone detached and above it all—well then, this can never work.  That isn’t and has never been who I am.

Honestly, I don’t think you want that, though.  It seems, from some of what you have said, that you never wanted it.  I don’t know how or why we got our wires crossed, but it seems that we have been working at cross-purposes.  Perhaps it is because we never say things.  I’m not sure that ‘ _not saying things_ ’ is sustainable.  Shall we vow to try and ‘ _say things’_ as much as possible from now on?

I know you find it difficult.  It is difficult.  And I’m willing to wait for your words.  Just tell me you need me to wait, and I will. 

I’m not very skilled at it either.  I’ve so little practice, and at times words just simply fail me.  I’ve spent most of my life either trying to convince myself that I don’t feel, or inwardly flagellating myself when it is all too obvious that I do!  Instinct is to repress.  But it seems that instinct doesn’t serve either of us very well, so why continue to heed it?  Shall we vow to do better, John?

You asked me, too, about what happened when I was away, what I meant by the ‘pain of interrogation’.  I imagine you already know what I mean.  It isn’t easy for me to talk about. 

There are techniques, things you learn to do to dissociate and block out the worst of torture.  I did what I had to and endured the best I could.  It only happened three times.  I do have nightmares now and again and a few scars as souvenirs, but you mustn’t concern yourself over it now, John.  It’s long over and I’m alright, now.  Well, as _alright_ as one ever is after that sort of thing.  You know how that is, better than most, I imagine.

As for you being afraid, firstly, of course I won’t tell anyone.  I know enough by now, that anything spoken between us like this is a confidence.  It goes no further than here.  I know that I have not always been trustworthy in this regard, but I can see how important it is to you.  So, please know you can trust me.

Secondly, I know, John.  I’ve always known.  I’ve known since that first night at Angelo’s when you tested the waters and then pulled back with a full denial when I rejected your advances.  I know and it’s alright.  If it is something you want to manage on your own, then of course I will give you that space.  But I do want to say this—I don’t think that you should have the expectation that you must have totally eradicated this fear in order to come home.  By all means, ask yourself whatever questions you need to ask, take the time to ruminate on the answers, but there are some things that I think you may not be able to find the answers to outside the context of ‘us’.

I know you want to be everything and give everything when you come home.  I want to give you the same—everything you need, anything you want.  But, if we take a step forward in some areas, only to have to take two steps back for some time, you won’t be hurting me, John.  Let me help.  I will need your help too.  There is nothing wrong with moving ahead together, even if that moving is in small increments, in fits and starts.  We have our whole lives ahead to figure it out together, now.

Well, I should go.  I need to check the hives and take Gladstone out for his walk.  Thank-you for this.  Thank-you for every honest word.  I do know that it’s not been easy for you to write them, and I am so grateful that you did.

 

Yours,

Sherlock


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's gotten a bit longer in the new version. They talk about sex more. ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a completely new chapter, and there is a flashback to John's teenage years, so a lot of new **trigger warnings**. Please heed:
> 
> * homophobia (by John's father)  
> * homophobic slurs (by John's father)  
> * internalised homophobia (John's)  
> * physical abuse (by John's father)  
> * verbal abuse (by John's father)  
> * drug use mention (by John's father in reference to his mother)  
> * drinking (John in the past)  
> * dealing with grief and loss (John)  
> * self-hatred (John's)  
> * shame (John's)  
> * sexual confusion (John's)  
> * rough masturbation (John)

> _‘I am attracted to you.I feel—things, about you, for you, near you.’_
> 
> _‘(I’ve been in love) ‘Once’ meaning now, here, with you.’_
> 
> _‘When I look at you, when I am close to you and I can feel you, smell you, taste you in the air around me, I—I ache for you.  I want it, John.  I want you.’_

John traces his finger over the words.  They glow against his thigh; the phone warm, heavy—like the weight of Sherlock’s hand, or the possibility of it, at least.

Unexpected words.

But not.

Finger against the screen, scrolling back a day or so… 

> ‘ _sometimes i want you to touch me, push me down, suck me off.  My stag do.  you were so…  you could have had anything, all of me._ ’

John’s own words staring back at him.  Crass, hungry, embarrassingly desperate.

Sherlock’s ‘ _I ache for you_ ’ so earnest, so beautiful, so pure in comparison…

 

* * *

 

The strike is so hard it makes his teeth rattle.  He sees stars for a brief minute, tastes the copper tang of blood fill his mouth.

Harry is shouting at Dad.  Not begging, she doesn’t do that anymore.   “I HATE YOU!!!”

“Shut up girl, this is none of your business!”

John shakes his head a little to clear it.

Harry’s standing straight and strong, eyes flashing.She does hate him.John sees that for the first time.She hates Dad bone deep.He wonders if she hates him enough to leave.He wonders if she hates him more than she hates their mum, or more than she loves him.

“You hi-hit him again and you’ll be ssorry!!!”  Her words are soft around the edges.  She’s been drinking.  That explains the courage ( _stupidity?_ ).

Dad reels away from him to focus on her and John takes the opportunity to regain some of his dignity, yank up his zip, toss the magazine to the end of the bed.  It wasn’t like that anyway.  It wasn’t what he thinks…

“You shut your bloody mouth, or you’re out, you understand.  You’ve already tried your luck one too many times, girl.  Say another word and I’ll have you out on your arse so fast it’ll make your head spin.  Now go and leave me and your brother to this.  It’s man’s talk—none of your affair, and it’s a conversation we’d likely not even be havin’ if not for you.”

“What the fuck is that supposed mean!”

“Watch your mouth!”

Harry laughs, mirthless and bitter.  “Oh, that’s rich coming from you.”

“This is your mother’s influence—all of it!  I didn’t raise a couple of queers.  This is her blood coming out in ya both.”

“Oh shhhut up, Dad.  You don’t know anything…”

John can see the man’s shoulders trembling with rage, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.  “Get out…”  The tone is lethal. 

And Harry seems to finally regain some sense.  She shrugs.  “Fine.  But you hit him again, and I’m calling Mum.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

It’s their dad’s turn to laugh.  “Well, good luck with that.  You think she’s gonna to drop her books, and her drugs, and her ‘ _friends_ ’, and come running back here, all the way from Cambridge, to rescue ya’?  She doesn’t give a shite about you two.  If she did she’d never have left in the first place.”

Harry goes pale.  Her eyes fill.  “I hate you…”  barely a whisper.  But it works.  She leaves.

And then suddenly Dad is swinging back on him, swooping down, scooping the copy of ‘Rolling Stone’ off the end of the bed.  He stares down at George Michael on the cover, sniffs in disgust and then tosses the magazine back in John’s direction.  John lets it bounce of his chest and fall to the floor.

“You tossing off to fags now?  You gonna turn bent on me too?!”

John frowns.  “George Michael isn’t like that.  And besides, it wasn’t him.  It wasn’t even the magazine.  It just happened to be there.”

The corner of his dad’s mouth quirks wryly.  “You expect me to believe that.”

“You can believe whatever you want.”

John hates that he flinches when the man raises his fist again, but the strike never comes.  “Look at you, flinching like a girl.  You’re weak.  Always in your room, all these bloody useless novels, queer music, and scribblin’ away in those notebooks of yours—poetry is it?”  He laughs derisively.  “And you and Danny up here ‘studyin’’ ’til all hours.”

“We ARE studying!!  Besides, Danny has a girlfriend—Dawn Holman—the blonde that works at the florist.”

“We’re not talking about Danny and his girlfriend!”

“WE WERE!  You were making insinuations!”

Dad pushes a finger against his chest.  “You need to get out of your room more, boy.  You need to take up some sport.  I’ve told you two years runnin’ to try out for football, and you’re still spending all your free time ears glued to your Walkman, or nose in a book at the bloody library.  And you’re 16 years old, and nary a bird in sight.  What’s your old dad supposed to think, mm?”

“That maybe getting good grades is more important to me than girls or football?”

His dad takes a step back.  “People will talk.”

“So what!”

“You know what they’re saying about your sister, in town.  I can’t even show my face at The Legion anymore.”

“Yeah, well I’m not like that!  It’s not my fault people are nosey.”

“It _is_ your fault if your prancing about town like a bloody poof!”

“I’m NOT!  And you didn’t even give it a second thought until the thing with Harriette and Karen.  Bloody Thatcher, Section 28 and all in the news lately.  Just—leave me alone.”

“And Maggie was right to do it!  It’s not natural, boy.  It’s not right.  You want that?  You wanna die of some fag disease?  You wanna take it up the arse like some girl?!”

“YOU’RE AN IDIOT!  THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!!!”

He sees something snap behind his Dad’s eyes.  He expects another punch but it’s a push instead, hands shooting out, striking hard and fast against both shoulders, hard enough to send him sprawling back on the bed on his arse.  He glares up in angry defiance as his father shoves a finger under his nose. 

“You get yourself a bird, and you join up for some bloody sport by end of month, you hear.  I’m sick and tired of this nonsense.  Maybe ya could piddle around with your poncey hobbies when you were a lad, but it’s long past that now.  Time to step up.  Time to be a man.  Enough is enough, boy!”

“FINE!”  John shouts, just to get him out of his room, just to be left alone.

“Fine.  And mind you do.”

The door slams behind his dad as he leaves, and the silence left in the room is thick, comforting.  John flops back on the bed, and lets his eyes slide shut.  His hands are trembling where they rest against his belly.  He breathes deep and even, tries to make it stop, but gives up after awhile when his limbs continue to insist on having a mind of their own.

He hadn’t lied.  It wasn’t the magazine.  He wasn’t getting off to anything.  He _isn’t_ like that.  He just…

He’s angry when he feels the prick of tears at the corner of his eyes. 

He just wants to forget, to not think about the fact that Danny hasn’t spoken hardly a word to him in eight weeks, not since he started seeing Dawn.  It’s left a hole he hadn’t expected.  They’d been everything to one another since they were nine years old.  And now, suddenly, John is just—disposable?

He’s just wanted to forget, that’s all the wank had been about.  Just to close his eyes, and not think of the way Danny’s eyes crinkled up at the corners when he smiled, or how his dark hair flopped onto his forehead when he was bent over studying, or the way his arm felt, draped across John’s shoulders—heavy, warm, safe.  He had just wanted to not feel the horrible, gaping ache of abandonment…

He didn’t ‘want’ Danny.  He missed him.

Distraction. 

It was just distraction.

 

* * *

 

John’s phone vibrates against his thigh, snapping him out of his reverie.  It’s a spam text, some sale on tennies.  He tosses the phone onto the coffee table, and flops back on the sofa with a sigh, dragging a hand wearily across his eyes.

It’s going on six.  He should make something to eat.  But he isn’t hungry—at least not in that way.

> _‘When I look at you, when I am close to you and I can feel you, smell you, taste you in the air around me, I—I ache for you.’_

Jesus…

It’s not a surprise, this—the fact that the thought of Sherlock can get his blood singing, and his skin tingling, his cock hard as a rock in his trousers.  That’s been happening for years, and he’d been a fool to start indulging so much when Sherlock was ‘dead’.  It became a habit, almost like the hit of a drug.  Sometimes he thinks it’s the only thing that kept him from putting a bullet in his brain those last few months before ‘Mary’ had insinuated her way into his life.

So now, here he is, alone in this half-furnished, echoing flat, surrounded by ghosts, the phantom of Sherlock’s presence.  It only makes sense that his body remembers, begs for attention.

But Sherlock isn’t ‘dead’ anymore.  He’s miles away, true, but it’s nothing an hour or so’s train ride couldn’t bridge.  Sherlock is a ghost with a voice, now, a ghost that can be easily conjured, and that’s something altogether different…

> _‘I am attracted to you.  I feel—things, about you, for you, near you.’_

“Fuck.  Me too…”  whispered into the false dusk of the lounge.  Curtains pulled in the early evening.  Shut out the world.

John palms the front of his trousers, one long, slow drag and groans loudly into the quiet.

It’s intense.  It’s almost overwhelming.  He feels like he’s in uni again, flirting with handsome blokes at parties and then coming home to frantically, furiously wank out his confusion and frustration. 

It rained earlier, but the sun came out in the afternoon, and it’s hot, close, humid.  The flat is stifling.  He should open the windows, but he doesn’t want to be quiet.  A shower might be nice, but he’s not stupid, he’s not going to last, and he knows it. 

Should he feel guilty, he wonders, as he strolls down the hallway, stripping off his shirt and vest, unzipping his trousers.  Should he feel odd doing this in this bed he had still been sharing with the woman he called wife less than eight months ago, or doing it without asking Sherlock first.  Would Sherlock be alright with this—John thinking about him as he gets himself off?  It’s hard to know.  There is so much John still doesn’t understand.

He toes out of his socks, kicks off his trousers, strips off his pants, and lays down on the bed to stare up at the ceiling.

Sometimes, before, when Sherlock was dead, he liked to see how worked-up he could get before touching himself.  One night, only slightly tipsy, he’d managed to conjure such a vivid fantasy that he swore he could actually feel Sherlock’s hand wrapped around his cock.  He’d rode waves of pleasure, focussing on the slight friction of sweat-damp cotton pants every time he rolled his hips, and like some sort of magic he’d come wholly untouched. 

He’d cried in the dark for an hour.  It had been horrible, and he’d sworn off the habit entirely.  He’d lasted two weeks before he’d had to get off in the loo at work—pent up, angry, so full of the ache of grief that he felt like it was going to smother him to death if he didn’t let go.  He came home that night and drank until he passed out.  He stopped trying to refrain after that.

But then there had been Mary, and it had been fine for awhile—until Sherlock had come back from the dead…

John forces the thoughts from his mind.  He doesn’t want this.  He doesn’t want to think about the past.  Right now, right here, he’s mad with desire.  His cock aches with it—hot and heavy, twitching against his belly every time he conjures some image of Sherlock in his mind.  It’s not going to take much.  It’s not going to take anything at all…

But still, he doesn’t touch.  There is a kind of satisfaction in this, in denying himself, making himself suffer a little. 

Sherlock loves him.  He’s said so.  And there is something so pure in that.  Sherlock Holmes doesn’t fall in love—has never truly been in love, apparently, and yet—he loves John.  And John doesn’t deserve it.  He knows that.  He knows it to his very core. 

He’s been tricking himself all these months, thinking it’s Sherlock he’s angry at.  It’s not.  He hates himself, for all the things he missed, for not being enough, smart enough, observant enough, empathetic enough, for missing everything important.  And now for this—Christ, how he hates himself for all this wanting bound up inextricably with shame.

Sherlock deserves the world—a good man.  John is not that man. 

John is small and scared, angry and confused.

He reaches down at last, wraps a hot, dry hand around his cock and pulls.  He needs some sort of lubrication, but he won’t allow himself that.  Let it be uncomfortable.  Let it hurt a little, even.  It’s better than the alternative, better than drowning in soft, languorous bliss, trembling with emotion he doesn’t know how to deal with, and a level of pure pleasure he doesn’t feel he deserves.

He’s rough with himself, tight grip, pull hard and fast, pinch bruises into hip bones, and twist at peaked nipples until the pain and pleasure all feel the same.  He keeps bringing himself right to the edge and then pulling back.

Everything hurts. 

Good.  He wants it to. 

He wants to feel like he’s dying when he comes, like how he did sometimes when Sherlock was gone.  Better him than Sherlock.  Let the orgasm break him, rip him apart.  Was that what it felt like to Sherlock when he hit the pavement?

Disturbingly, it’s that thought, that image that tips John suddenly over the edge.  It catches him by surprise, his balls pulling up, his whole body seizing.  And Christ does it hurt.  He shouts loud, moans like a dying animal into the dim heat of the bedroom.  Every muscle in his body taut, his cock throbbing, pulsing stripe after wet, hot stripe across his belly, until he’s wrung out, exhausted and over-sensitised, his skin burning, head throbbing, prick slowly going limp against his palm.

He feels drunk.  He should get up, clean up.  He should hope the neighbours don’t call the police. 

He cries instead.

And he hates that more than anything, because it’s weak, and it’s stupid, and it makes no sense at all.


	25. Chapter 25

**John Watson** <jwatson57@gmail.com> 9:04PM 

to: _Sherlock_

 

Sherlock,

Seems your case kept you longer than you planned.  I hope you’re okay.  Did the Shepherd’s Pie turn out alright?

Things are slow around here since I decided to take time off from the clinic.  I don’t know what to do with myself.  I’ve been rereading all of our correspondence over the last couple of months, and it’s been good.  It’s helped me to see some things.  You’re right.  I think we have had our wires crossed a lot of the time.

I was reading your email from this afternoon, and thinking a lot about what you said, about me somehow making you feel that I didn’t want the real you.  Listen, I’m sorry.  I don’t know what it is that I do or did that makes you feel that.  If I do it, you have to promise you’ll point it out.  I guess I don’t always see or realise. 

I love this you, Sherlock.  I know I was angry at first, but I think it was because I was scared.  I was scared to believe it wasn’t just some sort of act, some game you were playing.  Honestly, I’m still a little scared of that.  It’s hard for me to trust.  You know that.  But I want so much for this to be real.  I need it to be.   

And listen to me, okay.  You _are_ amazing and brilliant, and you are a great detective, but that’s never been all I wanted, it’s never been why I stayed.  I stayed for you.  I stayed because I loved you, I guess.  No—I know.  I didn’t see it like that then—or maybe I did… 

Yeah, I guess I did.  I guess I did know.  Because I knew that being apart from you hurt.  I knew that I would always drop everything to go to you if you needed me.  You were always on my mind, always in my heart.  Does it make sense that I knew but didn’t know?  I don’t know how that can be, but it’s the truth, and it’s all I’ve got.

There’s a lot of things that I know, but don’t know, I think.  And that’s a part of what I’m trying to figure out right now.  Somehow I think that you probably see it all already.  Like when you said you knew I loved you, that you knew I was scared.  You’ve always known me better than I know myself. 

But somehow I think it’s important that I figure these things out myself, okay.  I know that doesn’t really make sense.  Why drag it out, when you could just tell me?  But…  I don’t know.  I guess I feel like I need to earn it?  I don’t really know what I’m saying.  I feel like I’m just rambling.  I’m sorry.

Can I tell you a story?  You remember Sarah Sawyer, don’t you?  I dated her that first year you and I were together.  Well, I say dated…  You remember the first date, right.  You should.  You were there.  And I don’t know if you can count it dating when you’re only together for a few weeks, but, you know…

Did you remember that I went to New Zealand with her, for a little vacation after everything that happened at the pool?  It’s on the blog, I think.  I went there to kind of get away from everything, to see an old mate from A.  He’d just moved there with his wife and daughter.  Sarah came too. 

It had been hard to really have any time alone with everything that happened.  She and I hadn’t even really had a chance to really get to ‘know’ one another, if you know what I…  You know what, you probably don’t know what I mean.  She and I hadn’t had a chance to shag.  There.  Clear?  There’d been a kiss or two, but nothing else.  There wasn’t time, what with breaking up Chinese smuggling rings, and gas explosions, and Moriarty!

So off we went.  I thought it would be great—a great way to connect and have some quality time with just her and me.  it wasn’t.  It wasn’t for so many reasons. 

First there was my mate, Andy.  He was so happy with his wife Kate.  They’d just had this gorgeous little girl.  They had that kind of perfect family every one says they want, you know.  I looked at him with his lovely wife and his beautiful daughter, I looked at how happy he was, I looked at Sarah holding that baby in her arms, and I recognised how beautiful she looked, how content, how right, and all I could think about was you.

I thought about having what Andy and Kate had.  I thought about having it with Sarah, because Sarah was brilliant.  There was nothing to not like about Sarah.  I thought about it and I felt nothing.  NOTHING!  It scared me. 

The first night we were there, I laid in bed beside her, I closed my eyes and I thought about the pool.  I thought about your face, the way you looked in those few moments before your brain caught up to what was really going on, when you thought, I think, that I had somehow been behind everything.  I saw hurt there, and betrayal.  You looked so small for those few seconds.  Did you know?  And I couldn’t shake it, Sherlock.  I couldn’t shake the look I saw in your eyes.  Like maybe you cared what I thought of you.  Like maybe my loyalty, and my caring was some kind of gift that you wanted, deep down.  It made me ache for you.  It made me feel things I didn’t expect.

I thought about the fear I saw in your eyes, real and genuine, when you saw the explosives wired to my chest.  I remember thinking, in the moment, that you must have a plan.  I didn’t trust what I saw in your eyes.  I thought it was an act to fool Moriarty into thinking you were compromised, off your game, because you were Sherlock, you were bound to have a plan, you always had a plan!  But, when I lay awake in the dark in New Zealand, and I played that moment over and over, I wasn’t so sure.  It looked like fear.  Like maybe, just maybe, it was the worst thing you could imagine for Jim Moriarty to blow me up.  It looked like you knew you hadn’t planned for it, for any of it, like it had all gone tits up and you were terrified.

I guess I intuited that a bit in the moment, too, even while still trying to convince myself you had everything under control.  I think that’s why I jumped him when I had the chance.  Stupid that.  I know that.  I know better than that.  But I did it without thinking. I did it on instinct, because my skin was prickling with horror at the thought that the world might go on turning the next day without Sherlock Holmes in it. 

I thought about all that in the dark in New Zealand too.

Third night there, things heated up a little when we went to bed.  Things were progressing nicely.  Sarah always smelled really good, and she had great hair.  She was what I like, you know.  So, I don’t know…  Jesus, I don’t know why I’m telling you this…

Things didn’t happen.  Do you know what I mean?  We got into the heat of things, and I was responding, and everything was as it should be, and then I just—I guess I just kind of mentally checked out.  All I could think about was the pool, always the damn pool.  The look on your face, that made me ache, and the suspicion that you maybe cared more than you let on, and the way your hands felt on my body while you were stripping that bomb away.  All those things just sort of popped into my head at once, and I kind of freaked out on her, which had also never happened before.  Everything just unravelled at once, and I got out of bed, and went to the loo and just sat there.  I didn’t know what to do.  I didn’t know what was happening to me.

She was kind about it, but she said she didn’t think it was going to work between us.  I didn’t argue because I didn’t want to.  I knew she was right.  I knew something was wrong, and I thought I didn’t know what, but I did know.  Again, I know that doesn’t make sense.  But, I don’t know how else to say it.  I guess I knew I loved you?  I guess I—I knew that everything that fell apart in bed with Sarah that night—I knew that that was about you to.  But, I didn’t…  No—I _couldn’t_ accept that connection.  Not then.  Not yet.

So, I came home, and I wrote about breaking up in the blog, I think.  Yeah, I did, I remember now.  I wrote about it, and you commented and said you didn’t know, and then you went out and you bought me some beer.  That was the start.  It was such a funny, thoughtful little gesture.  And then you started walking around the flat in next to nothing, and you started making me tea in the mornings, and you started brushing by me, touching me, just a little bit, just passing whispers at the oddest times, and I could never tell if it was on purpose (was it?), or just my own fucked up perception (more likely this).

But, I couldn’t think and I couldn’t—I just couldn’t function.  I remember one morning (it was slightly after Baskerville, I think), I woke up and I could hear you downstairs puttering around the kitchen, and then you started practicing your violin, some familiar, slightly sad thing, and I realised I wanted you.  I ached for you, like I’d ached when I’d thought about your face at the pool.  Like there was so much fondness, there wasn’t a way to contain it anymore, and it had to come out somehow, so I lay there, and closed my eyes, and listened to you play and…

Christ, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but… 

Okay.  I lay there, and listened to you play, and I touched myself.  You know what I mean, right?  I didn’t think about anything really graphic, I just ached and the focus of that ache was you, and I knew that, I knew that when I was doing it, and your music was there, floating up from downstairs, and it felt like you too, somehow.  I felt too much for you in that moment, and it all sort of happened, and then it was over, and I didn’t know what to do.  That seemed to cross a line for me.  Some weird, invisible line I’d set up for myself.  It was hard to look you in the eye for awhile.  God, you probably noticed.  You notice everything.

But it never happened again.  I didn’t let it, until after you were dead.  And then it didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter because you were dead.  That’s when I let myself drown in the thought of it for awhile. 

The other night I told you I’d thought about us that way, together.It was mostly then, when you were dead.It was—well, I’m ashamed to say that it was easier then, and it was so hard when you came back, just showed up, suddenly, out of the blue, and there I was with Mary, and there you were in that fucking ridiculous waiter outfit, and I wanted to hit you Sherlock.I wanted to hit you so hard, and ask you how you could ever think, for a moment, that something like that could be funny! 

And then I saw the moment it caught up with you, the moment you realised you’d been a right prat, and your face—your face did that thing.  You looked so small again.  I ached.  Christ how I ached to touch you, it hit me like a lorry at 100 miles per hour and everything I’d felt, everything I’d dreamed and imagined just piled into me and compounded on that ache, and I wanted to kill you, and I wanted to fuck you, Sherlock, and all I could do was throw you to the floor of that restaurant, because it was too late, it all felt like it was too late, and I wanted you, and I loved you, and the only way I could ever have you now was that, on the floor of a restaurant, fingers wrapped around your throat, body flush with yours.  It was all we’d ever have, I thought.

I don’t know why I thought that.  I don’t know why I thought there was no out.  I hadn’t even finished my proposal.  I guess I could have called everything off, but I didn’t feel that I could.  You’d been dead, and you were my dream, my fantasy, that secret thing I kept for myself, the thing to get me through the day, like a drug hit, like—I don’t know what like.  But you were my secret, and I didn’t know how to make you anything more.  I wanted to, but it felt impossible, especially when I didn’t even think you wanted me too.

Jesus… I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this.  I don’t know if theres’ even a point.  I guess just to say that I wasn’t being flippant when I said I’m fucked up and no good, Sherlock.  I’m so fucked up.  I’m so confused all the time, and I’m so fucking tired. 

Sometimes I think I just want to jump on a train, right now, and come home.  I want to stop this, I want to stop keeping you something secret, something I hold in my heart, but nowhere else.  I KNOW I love you, Sherlock.  I know that now.  I KNOW I want to spend the rest of my life with you.  But not like this—not when I’m like this.

I know this probably doesn’t make sense.  I know this must be difficult.  I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry, Sherlock.  Know that I want to come home.  Right now.  This second.  I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.  But I’m still scared and I still can’t wrap my head around what I’m going to do when I get there, what we will be, how it will be with us.  I still see you as something I dance around the edges of.  That’s not fair to you.  That’s not fair to us.

I love you.  Just know that, okay.  Know that one thing for sure.

I WILL fix this thing.  I will figure it out.  This helps—talking to you like this.   It’s easier somehow, with this little bit of distance.  The physical distance, yeah, but also a kind of mental distance.  Words on a screen.  Your thoughts and stuff, but not having to look into your eyes when you say it, not having to hear your voice.  I drown in that, and I need clarity right now.  I can’t be sucked down into pure wanting.

I’ll fix it though, I promise.  Okay.  I will.

 

Write soon.

John


	26. Chapter 26

 

 

 

 


	27. Chapter 27

 

 

 


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Photo of Gladstone from [HERE](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/272749321157615340/).
> 
> **Trigger warnings:** Mention of pet death in the past (non-violent).

 

 

 


	29. Chapter 29

Sherlock Holmes <sholmes129@gmail.com>11:17 AM

to: John

 

John,

Deepest apologies!  I came home last night, and promptly passed out from exhaustion.  I just woke up a couple of hours ago and only then saw your email from the night-before-last.

However, now Gladstone’s had a proper meal and a proper scolding, and taken his medicine, and I’ve eaten and made myself a nice, hot cup of tea, and here I am.  I’m all yours!  Or rather, I plan to give my response to your email the attention and time it deserves.

Before I begin, let me thank you again for everything you did for me yesterday.   

I don’t know what I would do if I lost Gladstone, at the moment.  He keeps me company, sometimes it feels like he keeps me sane, and he helps me not to think about all this distance between us. 

Understand, I say that not to be difficult, or try to manipulate you into coming home.  I say it only because it’s true. I do miss you. I do wish you felt you didn’t have to fight this confusion on your own.  I know it’s difficult.  I understand everything you said in your email and I wish you would let me help.  But as I’ve said before, and as I will always say, if you truly feel you need to do it on your own, then needs must.  I will manage.

Alright.  On to your email, shall we…

You asked me to tell you when you do things that make me feel you don’t want the real me—a me who is emotional, who is ‘ _human_ ’, as you are so fond of saying.  Yesterday presented a fairly good example, I think, don’t you? 

I was upset, it’s true.  Probably more upset than the situation warranted.  I can admit to that.  But, I will be very honest with you John, that was precisely the sort of situation I mentioned before; one where, in the past, I have been cold, distant, shut-off.  I’ve reacted so because it was how I was trained to react.  But, oh the effort it takes! 

I don’t want to be that way with you.  I want to just ‘ _be_ ’ with you, just exist as myself, with no pretence.  That ridiculous man, panicking and acting in a way that must seem very foolish, very childish to you—that _is_ me.  Well, a part of me, at any rate.  The part I hide, of necessity—always have.  But the part I don’t want to have to hide with you, because if there cannot be openness, and honesty, and raw, intimate _knowing_ between us, then whatever is the point?

I understand it makes you uncomfortable.  I understand that you don’t understand why I’m so upset about ‘just a dog’, why you can’t grasp that I find it hard to regulate my responses to you, and become short, and rude, and curt.  Everyone responds as you do, John—Mummy, Dad, Mycroft, everyone I’ve ever known. 

I know that sort of behaviour is not the _done_ thing.  It troubles people.  But it is all or nothing with me it seems.  If I am to let myself feel things, then sometimes that feeling becomes too much, and In those moments I can’t seem to stop it without expending great amounts of energy.  Sometimes I don’t have that energy to expend.   When it is someone I love in danger, I don’t, and it compounds, snowballs, and then there’s no getting out of the spiral.  I just have to let it run it’s course. 

I know high emotion makes you ill-at-ease.  I know.  I suppose it is something that we should talk about.  I don’t want to upset you, John.  I don’t like snapping at you, like I did yesterday, when you are just trying to be helpful.  But I do panic sometimes and I am unreachable once it gets to a certain point.  I’ve tried everything.  Others have tried everything.  The only things that help are drugs, or not letting myself get to that point in the first place, and sometimes that is impossible.  So what shall we do about it, you and I?  Let’s discuss it at some point.

But, enough about me.  You have shared so much of yourself and that is what truly deserves my full attention. 

I will admit to being surprised, John.  I know it is not easy for you to be so forthcoming about yourself.  I can’t help but feel honoured that you felt me worth the struggle.  Thank-you.

And yes, I do remember Sarah.  I rather hated Sarah.  She was the first person to come between us.  How else was I to feel?! 

Because you are quite right - what was there not to like about Sarah?  Nothing.  She was perfect for you and that’s why I hated her.  She piqued your love and desire so effortlessly, it seemed.  I suppose I didn’t see it quite that way at the time.  I hated her for simpler reasons—she took you away from me, she stole the time with you that should have been mine, and all she had to do was exist.  She didn’t have to work hard to hold you.  She was everything I was, everything you liked, and yet she was also the one thing I could never be. 

I was horribly jealous.  I see that now.  Forgive me if I contributed in any way to the premature end of that relationship.  I did try to insinuate myself between you and that was unforgivable.  I tried to do better where Mary was concerned—for you, for your sake.  But that turned out a mess as well.  I never seem to get it quite right.

I had always wondered what happened between you and Sarah in New Zealand.  And I _did_ know you’d gone there with her, you know.  I only pretended not to know because I didn’t want to hear you talk about how wonderful it had been when you got back.  I didn’t want to hear about all the lovely things you’d done together.  I was glad when you got home and wrote in your blog that you’d ended things.  That’s a horrible thing to feel.  I realise that.  But it’s the naked truth.    I was glad, John.  Not glad for any hurt you might have experienced, but glad she was gone and you were mine again.

I had suspected that the end of things with her had something to do with what had happened at the pool.  You changed after that.  I could tell that something was bothering you, and when you got home from New Zealand your eyes lingered, your fingers sometimes brushed mine when you handed me something, you sat closer in cabs and stood closer when talking to me, you stared at my mouth more often and licked your lips like you hadn’t had anything to drink in months.  It was like you were drawn, almost magnetically, into my orbit after that, no matter where we were or what we were doing.

You remember the Adler affair?  The day we went to first retrieve the phone?  I asked you to hit me.  At first you didn’t want to, and then I hit you, just to get things started, and I saw something snap.  You could have just hit me back, but you didn’t, you took it far further than necessary.  You wanted your hands on me, your body against mine.  Or, so it seemed…  Any excuse, anything…  I felt you were just looking for an excuse in those days. 

When we went to Grimpen on the Baskerville case, you booked us into the same room and I thought that perhaps something would happen then, but then we argued and it didn’t. 

I wanted…  I wanted something to happen.  It felt inevitable and necessary.  But then Moriarty resumed his deadly game, and we lost everything, and we never seemed to quite find our footing again, did we… 

It’s interesting to me that you felt that I was the one making more overt gestures after the pool.  From my side, it seemed that _you_ were the one making them. I didn’t understand it then, or what it made me feel.  I had to go away to fully realise I couldn’t live without you, that everything I had been feeling in those few months leading to my leap had been love, yearning, desire…  I’m sorry, John.  I’m sorry it took me so long, when I think that, perhaps, you were ready, hopeful, long before that.

I know that probably sounds somewhat ludicrous to you.  You’ve just confessed that you still don’t feel ready, that you still feel afraid sometimes.  But, there is a part of you that knows, even while the other part doesn’t, I think. 

It’s like you said— _you know, but you don’t_.   You were afraid that wouldn’t make sense to me.  But, it does, John.  I see it in you.  Those months after the pool, and before I left you—in those months some part of you drew so close, some part of you was constantly drawing me toward you.  We were so close to colliding then.  If only we’d let ourselves, what might have happened, I wonder?

I know you’re afraid.  You’re afraid that when that collision inevitably happens, everything we have been will change—die.  You’re afraid this friendship will collapse in on itself and gutter.  But John, that is how galaxies are created!  We must collide at some point, we are going to have to let this thing consume us, to burn bright, to burn out, to even, perhaps, collapse in on ourselves like a dying star, if we are ever going to be reborn into something new. 

Don’t be afraid.  You’re the bravest person I know.  If anyone is fit for the task, it’s you.  I can’t help but think of how beautiful it will be.

You _do_ know that I love you?  Say that you do.  Say that you know that I would never push you past the point of comfort.  I know that we have walked a dangerous line in the past.  We toy the edges of that thing, don’t we.  You will forgive me, but you seem to crave it somewhat—out there, on cases. 

‘The work’ is more than ‘the work’ when we share it.  It became a kind of dangerous game with us, too, didn’t it.  I push you, always testing the limits of how far, and you seem to almost resent me if I don’t.  It is why, for a long time, I thought that was all you wanted.  That set I’d built and that character I’d created that allowed you to play the game—danger, risk, even pain sometimes.

I’m perfectly willing to play, if it’s what you want, what you need.  But I will be honest, I sometimes hate that game.  It toys too close to the edge.  In Baskerville—too far.  I think I took it  too far that time.  Perhaps even the train carriage, the bomb?  Was that too close, too?  It’s such a delicate business…  Your heart is so precious to me, John.  I don’t always feel up to the challenge of knowing where the line is drawn.  I would never forgive myself if I injured you—body _or_ soul (and I have, I know, and it’s unforgivable).  I would rather err on the side of caution where your heart and, yes, your body are concerned.    

There’s no rush.  There’s no expectation.  Only—only that you let your heart and your instinct lead.  That’s what you do best, John. 

I love you, and I will never be anything but infinitely careful with you.  Whatever you want, when you want and with every ounce of consideration you deserve.  If you want nothing more than to hold my hand in yours, every day from now until the day we die, I would be so pleased, so honoured, John.  If you wanted to share my bed, to sleep in my arms, then you may.  If you want my lips on yours, you may have that too.  If you want more, you may have more.  If you want none of those things, then there is no need for any of that to pass between us.

You do know what you want—some part of you knows.  Listen to that part and trust it.

I’m not leaving.  I’m here, John.  I’m here and I’m yours—wholly.  You can trust yourself.  And hard as it must be to believe, you can trust me. 

I will never leave you again.  I will take better care of myself, I promise.  Even in death, even in that, I won’t leave you.  You have my word.  I will take such good care of myself, you will be amazed!  I will say or do whatever you require, so that you can have the security of knowing my vow is sound.  If you want me to sign a contract, I will.  If you want me to stand in front of witnesses and declare it, I will.  I you want me to carve it into my flesh, I will.

Tell me what you need to feel safe.  Just tell me, and it’s yours.

 

Yours always,

Sherlock


	30. Chapter 30

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the few little typos in this. It takes hours to mock these up, and I found them after the fact. I don't think they interfere with understanding too much, and they are texts, so I figure a couple of typos are understandable.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content Warnings:** Mild pining, masturbation, sexual fantasy

John Watson is a shameless flirt.And a fairly effective one.

No. 

Possibly.

( _Yes, sweet heavenly bliss.  Yes!_ ) 

Bias—surely.  Logic currently clouded with wave after wave of dopamine, serotonin.

They were texts—words on a screen, and yet here he is, heart full, cock hard, skin prickling, tingling, fire racing through his veins, head full of a million tiny details: long lashes fanning up over heavy lids, soft hair (precious metals) music at John’s nape, faint scars over the knuckles of small, strong fingers, fists like iron, body—compact, coiled tight, spring ready to snap, and oh the pleasure when it does.

Sure, firm grip, wrists pinned above his head, eyes like stormy seas, gathering dark with the promise of calm, paralysing his body, emptying his head until there is nothing but the ache, the stretch, the fullness of John, and John, and ‘ _oh god, oh please, yes, yes, yes, John!’_

A wet nose nudges beneath his palm, and Sherlock’s eyes snap open.  Two brown eyes observe him.  Tail thumping against the sofa cushion.

“You were naughty.  I’m not talking to you.  Go away.”

The tail moves faster.

Sherlock squirms a little.  The front of his pants are damp.  John’s fault.  But he’s already indulged once, that morning, before all the texting.  One must at least attempt to exert some self control.  His body thinks differently, it seems.

“Go lay down.”

Gladstone crawls into his lap instead, sniffs at the front of his trousers.  Embarrassing.  Or it would be if there were anyone there to see.  Reaching down he scoops him up.  “You should be sleeping.”

He should be sleeping, Gladstone’s eyes seem to say.

Ridiculous.

He sets the pup down, and gets to his feet, points to the bed by the hearth that never gets used.  “There.  Go lay down.  I don’t want to go to bed yet.”

Gladstone runs circles around his feet instead.

“You’re ridiculous.  Sit.”

The dog does.  That’s a first.  Sherlock cocks a brow in surprise.  Cleverer than he looks, then.

“Good boy,”

‘ _Christ, so good…_ ’ the echo of John’s voice, of his fantasies, still in his head.  His cock throbs.

If he sits at the kitchen table, the dog will sleep.  He can write John.  His body can have time to regain some semblance of balance—traitorous thing!

“Go lay down.” 

‘ _Lay you out and straddle you on the floor of the restaurant…’_

And oh he has files and files of data on that!

His skin contracts into gooseflesh, scalp tingles, nipples harden, mouth goes dry.  Arousal, so strong it feels like a drug hit.  His head is spinning.

No.

Concentrate.

Focus!

He removes his trousers and the relief is instant.  He moans softly, in spite of himself.  Folds the trousers.  Lays them over the back of the chair.  Sits.  Cracks open the laptop on the kitchen table.

 

* * *

 

> **Sherlock Holmes** <sholmes129@gmail.com>  1:23 AM
> 
> to: _John_
> 
>  
> 
> John,
> 
> I hope this is alright.  I find I can’t sleep, thinking about our discussion tonight, and it is easier, sometimes, to put on paper (digital or no) things that seem too difficult in person.  Not that texting is ‘ _in-person_ ’, exactly, but it does seem more immediate than this.
> 
> I feel I want to be very forthcoming with you.  If what I share here is uncomfortable for you at any point, please don’t feel that you have to continue reading.  You may delete this email unread.  You may opt not to discuss it.  It is your choice.
> 
> But, what I want to get at here, is this: I have not been very forthcoming with you about my desires.  I think that you have shared more with me about yours, both in our correspondences, and through your body language, over the years.  I know that in many ways I am a closed book to you.  And I have fought with myself tonight, as to whether I should open myself to you, now, in this way. 
> 
> You see, I am not quite sure if your discomfort in this area is wholly due to your own reticence, and attempts to fully understand your wants and needs, or whether a part of it is also a result of not knowing if I struggle with similar desires of my own. 
> 
> I wonder, sometimes, if you feel quite alone in your yearning, as though I do not really want you at all.

 

* * *

 

Gladstone has settled.  Sherlock’s body has not. 

His focus having been slightly rerouted has resulted in only the merest shift in arousal.  He is still half hard.  At least it is bearable now in just his pants, but the house is still warm, and the email is for John, to John.  Every word is a reminder.

_John’s tongue darting out to moisten his lips, ‘Amazing!  Fantastic.’_

Sherlock’s ears ring with all the notes of John, eyes awash with his colour.  He can taste him on his tongue, even though he has never had the pleasure.  He has, after all, tasted his nearness, the flavour John leaves in the air of any room he enters.  Sweet, tangy, and always full of salt.  But to actually taste him—saliva, skin, hair, to taste the man and not merely his shadow…

Sherlock’s breath has picked up again.  He fights to control it.

Write.

 

* * *

 

> I know I have told you that I do feel desire for you.  It _is_ a rare thing.  That was the truth.  I don’t feel these things, and they have surprised me, not just feeling them in the first place, but as time has progressed, the frequency, and intensity with which I feel them.  Respect, fondness, love, awe—yes, all these things.  But also desire, want, need, hunger.  It burns hot and bright, near constantly, and I’ve simply stopped trying to fight it.  It takes more energy to fight than I have motivation to try.
> 
> I have indulged myself often, especially since we parted ways all those months ago.  You have been the constant focus of my fantasies.  And even that—fantasy itself—is something I have rarely, if ever, bothered to indulge in.  There seemed no point.  I would masturbate, as I have mentioned, to release tension, to keep my body at peak performance, but it was often quick and perfunctory.  When you came into my life, that started to change. 
> 
> I am not like you, John.  I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it was you in my heart or mind as I touched myself.  It happened so slowly, and strange as it sounds, I think it had been happening for some time before I fully realised it, realised that the warm, full, safe feeling that had slowly started to accompany these moments of release was somehow attached to the thought of you, that it was love, that it was the yearning born of that, that it was your hands I wanted on my body coaxing me towards climax.

 

* * *

 

Gladstone is whimpering and running in his sleep on the bed by the hearth.  Sherlock palms the front of his pants, and sighs with pleasure.  Again.  Again.  Oh…

Oh, he could give in now.  He could pad quietly to the bedroom while the dog sleeps and finish swiftly, efficiently.  His body is all but begging for release, but there is something delicious in this, too, in denying himself.  Sometimes he feels there is almost more pleasure in this—keeping himself teetering on the brink.

Recently he has imagined waiting for permission.  The John in his mind was heady with the authority of that.  Old habits…  ‘ _When I say.  Only then._ ”

“Yes, John.”  His own voice startles him in the quiet of the house.

A wind has kicked up outside.  It will rain soon.  The house will cool.  That will help. He can feel a drop of sweat trickling down his spine.  Tongue darts out to moisten his lips, hands travel up the line of his ribs, graze over his chest.  The electric shock as he flicks at his erect nipples through the cotton of his shirt.

His cock leaks a little in his pants.

The ache, the need is almost torture now.

 

* * *

 

> But, I do know now, John.  I have known for a very long time.  Certainly since the moment I was sure that what I felt for you was something that eclipsed mere friendship.  That moment I can recall with perfect clarity.  It was in the middle of giving the speech at your wedding reception.  Such horrible timing, I know.  Forgive me.  But, I knew then, and that is when I stopped trying to pretend, and I have indulged shamelessly since that moment, often more than once a day.

 

* * *

 

Short, buffed nails along the inside of this thigh…

His hips jerk upward of their own volition.

‘ _Gorgeous…  Christ, Sherlock you’re so…_ ’

No.

Not yet. 

 

* * *

 

> Do I shock you?  I am sorry if this is uncomfortable for you.  I may not even send this email.  I am just so full of regret tonight, I suppose.  Regret that I never told you, or showed you, that I never even realised these things until it was too late.  And if you had not been ready I would have waited.  I will wait for you now, John.  I would wait for you forever.  I have no choice.  There has never been anyone before you, and there will never be anyone after.  You are the sum of everything I have craved, yearned for, you are the best part of my life.  I don’t want anyone else.
> 
> And if you were to decide, now, that you wanted this sort of intimacy between us, it would be most welcome. 
> 
> I cannot promise you flawless technique (though, I have spent some time studying your preferences, and have tried to learn as much as possible, enough that I think you will be adequately satisfied).  But, I can promise you full attentiveness, infinite care, and the whole of my heart.  I can promise you that I will commit every shred of my deductive skill to learning your body, to reading it as I would a crime scene, learning it’s secrets, coaxing out it’s hidden appetites.  And of course, you may have me fully, too, if that is what you desire.  All of me, however you want, whenever you want.
> 
>  

* * *

 

‘ _Enough writing.  Christ.  Come to bed…’_

The John of his fantasies is insistent tonight.  And who can say no, to John Watson?

He teases a finger along the waistband of his pants.

 

* * *

 

> Do you want this, John?And if not now, do you think perhaps someday? 
> 
> Please know that I would never have brought this up if not for our conversation earlier.  It made me hope that perhaps you were more ready than you had realised.  At least for little things, easier things like this email, perhaps? 
> 
> It is somehow easier this way.  Even one more degree of separation than text provides.  Might you tell me things here, like this, that would be too difficult via text?  You tell me.  I find this easier, and there so many things I long to tell you.  I would tell you everything if you asked, every thing I have thought of passing between us, every secret fantasy. 

 

* * *

 

Hot, wet, slick—John’s tongue up the side of his neck.

Sherlock might explore a little.  John might like that, hands sliding over John’s back, resting over firm, taut gluteals—squeeze.

‘ _Fffuuu…._ ’

Yes, John would swear, of that, Sherlock is certain.  Given the right circumstances John can weave tapestries of profanity that might make a sailor (soldier) blush.  But what other sounds might he make?

‘ _Come here._ ’  That tone.  Oh.  He’d forgotten.  Soft.  Husky with want.  John the night of his stag do.  Velvet of whiskey in his veins.  Eyes heavy.  A smirk.  A chuckle.  And that tone.

‘ _No they don’t.  You tend to rub them up the wrong way._ ’

‘ _Come to bed.  Come on._ ’

Now, right now, if he’s quiet…

The bedroom is colder than the kitchen and lounge.  It doesn’t matter.

He eases the door shut, strips, everything in a heap, crawls atop crisp, cool sheets and pulls the nearest pillow tight against his chest.

Cool cotton on heated cock.

He moans loud, muffled by cotton and down.

‘ _That’s it.  Look at you.  God, so gorgeous.  Christ, Sherlock.  Fuck._ ’  That tone.  That tone!  Like worship and need, hunger and something so much more.

“John, please…”  Please what?  He doesn’t even know, just that he aches, needs ( _loves—you’re in love, Sherlock_ ).  Needs John.  Needs release.

‘ _Yeah?  You want to?_ ’  John sounds so achingly, deliciously perfect.  He sounds like arousal feels when it’s surging through his cells, stringing him out on pleasure, making him tremble, and grind against whatever is closest—frantic, desperate, ready to break.

“I want to. I need to.  Please.”

‘ _Yeah?_ ’

“Please!” 

The dog scratches at the door.  Too loud then, but almost there.  Almost…

John in his head is without inhibitions.  This John would do anything for him, even…

He reaches back, lets a finger slide down the length of his cleft, slick with sweat.  He can come from this, he’s discovered, grinding against a pillow, finger teasing at his entrance.  He managed two fingers once.  But there’s not time for that tonight.  Too close.

He glides easily, and when his finger brushes over the puckered flesh at his entrance, he grunts, so inelegant, so animalistic, crude almost, but he’s too worked up to care.  They arouse him, his own sounds.  Narcissistic no doubt. 

STOP THINKING!

His thrusts against the pillow are becoming erratic.  He’s stopped trying to be quiet.  He needs some sort of lubrication really, sweat isn’t nearly adequate, but he pushes anyway, groans as the muscle gives and his body takes him in.

‘ _I love you.’_ John whispers so clear Sherlock swears he hears it, and then everything coils tight, pulls up, flares and then lets go.  It’s cataclysmic.  He shouldn’t have thought ‘love’, not that.  It’s too much.

He whimpers and whines through the intensity of the pleasure.  Stars spark behind his eyelids, tears gather at the corners, and his head whorls.  He held out too long, maybe.  He’s had hits this hard, but drugs—never from self-stimulation.

This is madness.

Mad but sweet.

Worth the risk.

 

* * *

 

> But, I will leave it up to you.  Tell me if it is what you want, or no.  I will accept any answer.
> 
> Because, in the end, nothing has changed.  I love you now, as fiercely as I have always done - body and soul.  I will love you if you want this between us, or not.  I will love you even if you choose to never return to me.  I accepted that a long time ago.  I accepted that after Mary. 
> 
> Nothing you could ever do or not do could make my love for you fade.  You are the only one, John.  You have always been the only one.  You always will be, and I burn for you—hot, insistent, all-consuming.
> 
>  
> 
> Yours always,
> 
> Sherlock


	32. Chapter 32

John wakes with a start, the last vestiges of some dream clinging hazily to the edges of his mind.Mary had been there, and his Dad.There had been blood…

Wiping a hand roughly over his face to clear the last of the shadows away, he swings his legs over the side of the bed and reaches for his phone.  There’s nothing in text, but he smiles when he sees the email from Sherlock.  Sent in the wee hours.  Not surprising.  Some things never change.

Last night was awkward—bloody awkward.  That was his fault.  Won’t happen again.  He’s not sure what is wrong with him.  He’s been alone too much, that’s certain, trapped in this morbid little flat with nothing but memories and ghosts.  Communication with Sherlock is swiftly becoming a lifeline in an otherwise very bleak existence.

It had been idiotic to broach the topic of sexting.  As if even he had the courage for that, and Sherlock—who knew what Sherlock had thought?  He’d been painfully uncomfortable, that was obvious.  It was unfair, John knows, to push his wants, his desires on Sherlock that way.  He hates himself for it.

Tossing his phone on the bed, John gets to his feet, stretches and heads for the loo.  He’ll make himself wait to read.  He wants it too much, and to be honest, he’s a little nervous, too.  Sherlock was up hours after they’d stopped texting.  Perhaps he had time to think.  Perhaps he decided that this was too much, that John’s barely concealed desires are too much.

He’d told John!  He’d been perfectly honest.  No prior experience outside of his own personal explorations, and god knew how limited those might have been, and there John was, trying to toss them both into the deep end of the pool…  Stupid!

John stares at his face in the mirror over the sink.  Bags under his eyes, an unhealthy greyish pallor to his skin, hair almost all silver now.  He’s an old man, or at least he feels that way.  For all his chiding of Sherlock, he knows he’s been just as guilty of not taking care of himself.  He can’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything other than take-away, can’t remember the last time he’d got out to run off some energy. 

“Idiot.”

He should shower, but really he just wants to grab a cup of coffee and crawl back into bed to read Sherlock’s email.  Coffee is already made.  Maker on a timer.  It was a wedding gift.  Practically everything in the flat is let, or a gift, or belonged to Mary.  It’s started to feel like he’s living in hotel or museum. 

He hates himself for this indecision.  There is nothing keeping him here but himself.  He knows this.  It’s ridiculous, but somehow he feels frozen, trapped.  It’s echoingly hollow, but somehow it feels safe…  And Christ if that isn’t an indication of just how far gone he is.  Since when has John Watson ever wanted something that was safe.  What is wrong with him?! 

He decides to sit in the lounge rather than returning to bed.  Returning to bed will just encourage other pursuits, and he’s been doing enough of that lately.  He’s well into his forties, for god’s sake, he’s not a boy, and it’s started to border on the ridiculous.  Besides, Sherlock was clearly unsettled last night.  Whatever his email contains, it is likely to squelch any morning fires John feels flaring.

It comes as a surprise then, when he unlocks his phone and reads what Sherlock has sent him.

He gets all the way to: ‘ _I wonder, sometimes, if you feel quite alone in your yearning, as though I do not really want you at all,’_ before his his throat tightens with emotion he can’t possibly label. 

Sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, all of it so much (too much?).  Like a wholly unexpected gift.  

> _‘…desire, want, need, hunger.  It burns hot and bright, near constantly, and I’ve simply stopped trying to fight it.’_
> 
> _'I have indulged myself often, especially since we parted ways all those months ago.  You have been the constant focus of my fantasies.’_
> 
> _‘I think it had been happening for some time before I fully realised it, realised that the warm, full, safe feeling that had slowly started to accompany these moments of release was somehow attached to the thought of you, that it was love, that it was the yearning born of that, that it was your hands I wanted on my body coaxing me towards climax.’_
> 
> _‘I knew then, and that is when I stopped trying to pretend, and I have indulged shamelessly since that moment, often more than once a day.’_

John thumbs the email app closed, opens the phone.  His finger hovers over Sherlock’s name in his contacts.  He could call.  Right now, he could call. He knows Sherlock would answer.  But—what would he say? 

All the months apart seem to have caused a kind of tension between them, something that was never there before, except perhaps in those couple of months after John’s wedding when Sherlock cut off all contact.  He hates this.  He hates feeling so awkward, so out-of-step with the one person who has always felt like home to him.

He closes his phone and reopens the email.

> _‘And if you were to decide, now, that you wanted this sort of intimacy between us, it would be most welcome._
> 
> _I cannot promise you flawless technique (…).  But, I can promise you full attentiveness, infinite care, and the whole of my heart.  I can promise you that I will commit every shred of my deductive skill to learning your body, to reading it as I would a crime scene, learning it’s secrets, coaxing out it’s hidden appetites.  And of course, you may have me fully, too, if that is what you desire.  All of me, however you want, whenever you want.’_

And that’s not true either.  Not however he wants, not whenever he wants.  They’d started down that road last night, and look where they ended up…

> _'Please know that I would never have brought this up if not for our conversation earlier.  It made me hope that perhaps you were more ready than you had realised.  At least for little things, easier things like this email, perhaps?_
> 
> _It is somehow easier this way.  Even one more degree of separation than text provides.  Might you tell me things here, like this, that would be too difficult via text?  You tell me.  I find this easier, and there so many things I long to tell you.  I would tell you everything if you asked, every thing I have thought of passing between us, every secret fantasy.’_

Oh.

Oh.  Yes.  Maybe…

Leave it to Sherlock, the man who always seems to have a plan ( _no matter how ill-conceived, no matter how nerve-wracking_ ). 

> _'Might you tell me things here, like this, that would be too difficult via text?'_

Presumably…  No.  Assuredly.  Yes.  Yes, that would work.

Leaning over John grabs his laptop off the table beside the sofa and flips it open.  He should accept this offer.  He should.  It’s damn smart and more than tempting.  But, then that’s Sherlock all over, isn’t it…

He smiles, and looks back down at his phone. 

> _'But, I will leave it up to you.  Tell me if it is what you want, or no.  I will accept any answer._
> 
> _Because, in the end, nothing has changed.  I love you now, as fiercely as I have always done - body and soul.  I will love you if you want this between us, or not.  I will love you even if you choose to never return to me.  I accepted that a long time ago.  I accepted that after Mary.'_

His chest goes tight.

Christ.  This isn’t just fucking to Sherlock.  This is something—something John’s not sure he’s up for (capable of?).  It seems like a gift he doesn’t deserve.  After all those years of trying desperately to gain Sherlock’s affections, in whatever way Sherlock might be capable of extending them, he never thought that it would be like this!

He would have been grateful for the companionship, for the occasional expression of fondness or regard.  He would have been grateful if Sherlock had done the bloody dishes once in a wild while, just because he knew it irked John when they sat about long enough to grow mold, but he never even dared to hope for this sort of love.  It seems unreal somehow—still—especially coming from Sherlock.

> _'Nothing you could ever do or not do could make my love for you fade.  You are the only one, John.  You have always been the only one.  You always will be, and I burn for you—hot, insistent, all-consuming.'_

Jesus.  No wonder Sherlock had thought John’s old attempts at poetry to his girlfriends had been laughable…

John reads the words again—all of them.  Then again, and again, and again.

He would be a fool to say no.

He doesn’t want to say no.

It’s terrifying, still, even with a solution so safe, with so many degrees of separation in place.  Sherlock had told him last night.  He had said: ‘ _You use humour to diffuse your discomfort_ ’.  Had he been uncomfortable?  It was Sherlock who seemed nervous.  He had only felt badly because he had pushed Sherlock somewhere he clearly wasn’t ready to go.  It had been his concern for Sherlock, hadn’t it?

John stares down at his hands hovering over the keyboard, they’re trembling ever so slightly.  He squeezes the tremor out, ignores the throbbing ache shooting down his bad thigh and he begins to write.


	33. Chapter 33

Sherlock is just getting back from walking Gladstone when the phone chimes in his pocket.It’s surprising, a reply so soon.He had thought John would want to think about it more.He had clearly been affected the night before—uneasy, doing that dance that John has always done: come close, pull back…But it’s a clever plan he’s come up with, Sherlock knows that.There is no way he could have made this any easier for John. 

Letting Gladstone loose from his leash, Sherlock follows him into the back garden.  It’s a riot, and a mess.  There are rosebushes, but they don’t bloom.  There are dead branches everywhere.  He’d managed to clear a path to the shed and the hives, but the rest of it—the rest of it needs the touch of someone like John—John who seems to heal and revive everything he touches, John whose small hands work something akin to miracles every time he sets them to work.

Sherlock settles onto the garden bench tucked beneath the garden’s sole and aged Hawthorn, and fishes the phone out of his pocket.

 

> **John Watson** <jwatson57@gmail.com>   9:31  AM
> 
> to: _Sherlock_
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock,
> 
> I was going to text you and tell you that I needed some time to think about the email you sent me earlier.  I was going to—and then I read it again, and again, and again.  And after the fourth time reading it, I wanted your words.  I wanted more of them.  I wanted everything you offered.
> 
> Would you tell me everything?  How often, where, how?  Would you tell me how you’ve thought of me touching you?  How do I touch you in your dreams?  What do you feel with my hands, my lips, my body against yours?  How does your body respond?  Do you want this?  Me?  Really?  Truly?
> 
> _I want you._   I’ve wanted you for so long.  You can’t know how much. 
> 
> And you are right.  This is easier.  I feel I can tell you everything like this.  I don’t know how to move from this to texts, much less the possibility of face-to-face, someday, but I can’t seem to bring myself to care at the moment.  Because you are offering this, and I want this!  I want this, Sherlock.
> 
> Please—tell me everything.
> 
>  
> 
> Yours,
> 
> John

 

Oh.Surprising. 

He realises he had not expected John to respond so favourably, so quickly.  Why, he isn’t sure.  John is incredibly brave, even if he doesn’t always realise it.  He is also a very physical being.  One coiled so tight that Sherlock has often thought it would take just a single word of consent, just the smallest whisper of a breath, a fleeting touch for him to spring free.

Hmm…  Fantasy that.  But fantasy based on many years of observation.  An assumption not wholly unfounded.

His skin tingles and hums at the thought of sharing his most intimate fantasies with John, of constructing long, erotic emails, catered specifically to John’s preferences.  The thought of teasing and tantalising him at a distance like this is heady.

Sherlock gets to his feet, eager to begin.  “Gladstone!  Stop digging up the lettuces, and come!”


	34. Chapter 34

**Sherlock Holmes** <sholmes129@gmail.com>11:32 AM

to: _John_

 

John,

I will admit to being surprised by your response.  Are you quite sure?  I will give you everything you ask, of course.  And I suppose, that this way, if it is more than you want at some point, you can just set it aside, read it later, or not at all, whichever you prefer…

Ahh…  But, I’m prevaricating.  I’ve backed myself into a corner, and now I shall have to be brave, shan’t I…  Ah well, I did this to myself ;).  Onwards, then, shall we…

What would you like to know?  The first time I consciously chose to think of you in full, delicious detail while pleasuring myself? 

It was two weeks after your wedding.  The day after you left on your honeymoon.  I suppose I don’t have to tell you how difficult a time that was.  I needed to feel close to you, I needed to feel that you were somehow still mine. 

I knew that you were there, in Fiji, with _her_.  The thought of her lips on yours, her hands on your body, made me ill.  I wanted to take you back.  And I suppose that there was some dark, secret part of myself that felt that if I made love to you in my mind, somehow you might know, somehow you might feel some shift— _something—_ even at all that distance.

Madness.  Base sentiment.  But, I’ve told you that this feeling supersedes all logic, and I was not overstating, John.  You see quite well now, don’t you.  I am mad with love for you.  And in those days, I was mad with jealousy, too.

I was so unsettled, so distracted, I felt like I would go out of my mind with the loss of you.  So, I took myself up the stairs to your old room, in the middle of the day, on that rainy Sunday.  I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, and listened to the rain against the roof, the sound of the mice shuffling in the walls (did you know you there were mice up there?). 

I paced your room, I snooped through your wardrobe, and dresser.  I took out your old wheat jumper (the one you were wearing the night we shared our first case), and which I had purposefully stuffed between the dresser and the wall, so I might have it whenever I liked (yes, that is where it went).

I lay back down on your bed, and balled it up under my head, and tried not to hate your new wife, tried desperately not to hate you for leaving me.  Understand, I never could, but it was a depth of loss I was wholly unaccustomed to.  I was drowning.

And of course it was no good.  All I could think about was you, all the small, lovely details of you, the things that distract me constantly: the way your eyelashes curl upwards, so long they are constantly brushing the top of your eyelids, the angle of your mandible, how sharp, how the line of it looks in the morning, before you shaven, rough with stubble, and how smooth after you’ve showered, and the scent of you heady, and clean. 

I thought of how very much I had longed to bury my face in your neck, and just breathe the scent of you, press my lips there, to your throat, jaw, behind your ear, and murmur your name, in just that tone that makes your mouth go dry, and your skin bloom into gooseflesh (yes, John, I do notice those little things).

I thought of your lips, the curve of them, the way they are sometimes chapped, especially in the winter (you are always licking them!), and how pink they are when you have brushed your teeth, or been out in the cold, or even when you had been kissing one of your pointless girlfriends. 

Oh, I used to hate that the most, when you would come home, lips swollen and slightly chapped from kissing, and all I could think of was—well, I couldn’t quite form an idea of what I wanted then, but when you were away with Mary, then I knew.  I wanted to suck the taste of her from your lips and replace it with mine, so that she would know that you belonged to me, John.  Not to her, to me!

But, I was alone in your room, and there was no one.  I had only your jumper, your bed, your pillows, and the scent of you had long faded from all of them.  But, I had my memory of you, at least—every intoxicating detail.  Finally, a truly practical use for this ridiculous brain of mine!

And so I smoothed your jumper out on the pillow next to me, and I pulled it close, and I tried desperately to find any last vestiges of your scent there.  It was most likely my imagination, but I thought for a moment, I could smell the slightest hint of that aftershave you always use (you know the £2.59 one from Boots).  I breathed, just breathed you, until I had the clearest picture of you in my mind.

And that is when I just gave up, and gave in.  Do you want to know every detail of what I thought as I palmed myself through my pyjamas, canted my hips against that pillow, your jumper, buried my face in the last lingering scent of you?  The things I whispered into that empty room, how I hated you, and loved you, and wanted you to stop being such an utter, heartless arse and come home to me, to this, to my bed, and my arms and back to everything we had and had been, everything we might have been if you had not chosen her?  I was so angry at you, and so lonely, and I loved you with a fierceness that blotted out everything else.

Everything in that moment honed and focused on the sensations in my body, as I touched myself, and thought of you.  Thought, not only of your hands on me, how perfect your fingers would feel running through my hair, whispering over my scalp, not only of the backs of your fingers trailing over my arse, or the pads of your fingers digging into my hips as we frotted against one another, but of your lips on mine, the sounds you would make, your voice rough, and broken with sighs and grunts of pleasure, how you would whimper my name against my shoulder, how you would slowly deteriorate into nothing but a haze of desperate sensation, a string of groaned expletives and nonsensical words, until you finally let yourself go and came with a shout between our bellies.

The mere thought of it was enough to make me come, and I did.  I thought only of you, of your face when you came, how beautiful it must be, the feel of your cock, thick and flushed, twitching between us, the warmth of your breath, in pants and gasps against my chest.  I held nothing back, and I was completely spent, when I was finished. 

And then I cried.  Not because I missed you, though I supposed that was a part, but because I hadn’t realised until that moment, hadn’t fully realised what it was I had been craving, what I had been missing all those years.  I hadn’t realised what it could be, John.

But, in that moment, I did.  It felt, for just the briefest of moments, like you were there with me.  I could close my eyes and let the post-coital, chemical flood consume me, and feel you, as if you were truly there.  I could imagine, even if only for a moment, that you wanted me, like this, just as I wanted you.  And I cried because I knew that I might never have it, never have you in that way, and oh the loss of it… 

And then, when the rush had faded, and I had started to grow cold and uncomfortable, I pulled myself together.  I tidied myself up, made a cup of tea, and sat down and wrote that ridiculous post on your blog.  And then you were commenting back, and she was so angry with you, and I was pleased, John.  It was unforgivably childish of me, but I was so pleased that you preferred to talk to me on your own honeymoon.

You know all that transpired thereafter.  I am not proud of how I acted in the few weeks following your wedding.  I apologise for it.  It was embarrassing and infantile.  But I don’t regret a single second of that afternoon, of everything that happened in your room at the top of the stairs.  It was a revelation to me, John.  And like so many things between us, perhaps it was a revelation that came to late—or perhaps not…  You tell me.

Know this.  I love you and want you in equal measure and you may have everything, anything, all you need do is ask.

 

Yours, body and soul,

Sherlock


	35. Chapter 35

 

 

 


	36. Chapter 36

**John Watson** <jwatson57@gmail.com> 8:57PM 

to: _Sherlock_

 

Sherlock,

Can I just start this off by saying that I wish to Christ I was a good enough, a brave enough man to be able to say all of this to your face.  To not just be able to put it in writing here, but to look you in the eye and say it.  Even as I sit here putting pen to paper (or rather finger to keyboard, but you know—not as poetic), I know that this continued distance between us, this distance that I am choosing, is ridiculous.  I long to see your face, to hear your voice.  I miss you.  I lay in bed at night, and think about what it might be like to touch you, hold you, kiss you, fuck you. I want all those things.  I really do, and I hope that this is a start and maybe a bit of closure, too.  The longer this goes on, the more ridiculous putting all these words to paper seems…  I should just come home.

I’m going to say more to you here, and be more honest with you here, than I have ever been with anyone, and I’m scared to death.  It’s not that I don’t trust you with this.  I do.  I think I’ve always trusted you.  Even when I didn’t, I did.  I remember your brother being so surprised that first night, when he kidnapped me, all 007-like, and whisked me off to some abandoned warehouse to interrogate me.  He was surprised that I had chosen to trust you immediately, when it was clear from my therapist’s case notes, that I didn’t trust another living soul. 

I’ll be honest, Sherlock, I think what scares me the most at this point, is that I’m not sure I know how to do this, how to be with someone the way you seem to want to be with me.  I mean, sure, I’ve had my share of relationships—brief, casual, fun.  Mary was the longest, and I’d only known her six months when I proposed.  That should tell you something, I guess.  I like companionship.  I like the feeling of having someone to care for.  I like the fucking, too.  But, I’ve never—I’ve never had someone feel for me what you seem to feel for me, and I’ve NEVER felt for anyone what I feel for you.

How does this work? 

You told me that you touched yourself thinking about me.  You left no detail unshared.  And Christ, Sherlock, it made me so hard reading that, and I didn’t care.  I didn’t try to stop it, and I didn’t stop myself from getting myself off after, didn’t stop myself from saying your name when I came.  It was so intense, I thought I was going to black out, and that doesn’t happen to me, it just doesn’t, and yet it’s been happening quite a lot lately. 

What are you doing to me?  What is this?  I feel like everything about this is new, like maybe I thought I knew what relationships were, what love is, what fucking could be, but I never knew at all.  I feel like I’ve been lied to my whole life.  Someone told me that water was wine and I believed it and had no idea what I’d been missing.

You know what hit me the hardest in all that you wrote?  The fact that you trusted me enough to tell me you cried.  It’s hard for me to think of you like that, hurting like that.  It takes me back to the last time I saw you before we spent those two years apart.  I’ll never forget those tears on the roof of Barts.  I could hear them in your voice.  They haunted my dreams for years.  And then you came back and I found out everything had been a plan, and I wondered if they had even been real.  Were they?  Tell me honestly, okay.  No more lies.  I promise to tell you everything if you promise the same to me.  Even if we hurt each other.  I just—I just need to know I can have that from you now—100% truth. 

Okay, yeah, maybe trust _is_ an issue…  But, I’m trying.  And I still trust you more than anyone else I’ve ever known.

Jesus, this email is a mess.  I’m sorry, Sherlock.  I’m not good with words like you.  You know that.  I feel like I’m figuring this all out as I go.  I feel like I’m just learning to walk.  I wish you were here.  It’s always easier when you’re here. 

You _know_ me, don’t you.  I can always count on you for that.  Sometimes I’ve wanted to strangle you for that, but deep down I think it’s one of the reasons I love you.

Remember those deductions that very first day.  You’d known me seconds, and you could already tell me almost everything about myself.  I know that should have made me angry.  Like you said, most people told you to piss off!  But it didn’t.  You know what it did, Sherlock?  Christ, it made me so hot.  You just looked at me, and you knew me better than I knew myself.  It was intoxicating.  I wanted to know what else you saw.  I wanted you to see me completely.  I wanted to see and know myself in you.  I wanted it, I did…  And then I guess I kind of freaked out…

That first 36 hours was like a dream, but then I was moving into the flat properly, and there you were, day and night, so fucking beautiful all the time.  Like something from a magazine, something from a blokes wildest fantasy, and I just…  I don’t know.  I just freaked out.  And I didn’t want you seeing everything anymore.  I didn’t want you knowing. I didn’t want to see that part of myself in you… 

Oh god.  That’s it, isn’t.  I didn’t want to see my desires staring me in the face every time I laid eyes on you…

Jesus…

Fuck!  I’m so fucked up, Sherlock, and I’m so sorry.  This email isn’t at all what I set out to write.  I never meant to get so maudlin.  And I swear to you, I am dead sober right now (maybe that’s the problem)!

But, listen to me, okay—and this is the honest truth—I do want it now.  I want to see all of myself.  I want to see it, and I want to embrace it.  But, you’ve got to help me, Sherlock, please.  You’re clearly better at this than I am.  Just don’t let me run away from it.  Call me on my shit, okay.  Tell me when I’m being horrible. 

I don’t want to push you away, or run away from things, but it seems to be my default.  I’ve been doing it for so long, I do it without thinking.  I even want to do it right now.  I’ve walked away from this computer so many times while writing this.  I’ve almost deleted a dozen times, or more. 

I look at everything I’ve written here, and I feel raw, and exposed, and I hate the man I see.  How is it that you are the one who always called himself a psychopath, but I’m the one who seems to have no heart? 

And see, I guess I don’t exactly mean that either, because I do love you.  GOD, how I love you!  And that scares me more than anything.  I love you so much, I don’t know if it can even properly be called love anymore.  It doesn’t really fit into the mold of anything I’ve ever called by that name.  It’s so big, and so vast, and so terrifying.  I feel like I’m drowning in it, like it’s burning me up whole, and I don’t know what to do.  There is just all this FEELING, and yet here I am, in this half-packed, grim little flat in Acton, when I have an open invitation to your home, your bed, your arms, your heart. 

Who does that?!  And who has the patience for that? 

Sherlock, you do realise that no one, and I mean no one, would have stuck around this long, waited for me to catch up.  Why are you still here?  Why do you still love me, eh?  You’re Sherlock Holmes, for Christ’s sake!  And sure you’re an arrogant arse sometimes, and sure you can be moody, and difficult, and you keep bloody body parts in the refrigerator where we keep food, and occasionally blow up the stove, but your brilliant, amazing, gorgeous, and you love like—my god, how you love!

You could have anyone, do you realise that?! 

Do you even see the way people look at you.  Sometimes when we’ve been on cases I’ve wanted to slowly strangle the life out of some blokes for the way you they look at you.  Janine Hawkins!  Sure, it was for a case, all a ruse, I get that.  Doesn’t mean I didn’t wish she’s get hit by a lorry on her way out the door to work.  Irene Adler?!    Yeah, I was glad she was dead (until I found out she wasn’t), and then, I won’t lie, I wished death on her a second time.

You could have anyone, Sherlock, and yet you choose me.  And here I am, keeping you waiting, keeping you at a distance, and I don’t even want to!

You must be so frustrated and done with this email by now.  It’s not what I wanted it to be.  I was going to be all forthcoming about how I want you.  Because, I do you know.  I do.  I think about it too—how beautiful you would look coming undone, letting yourself go, about the sounds you would make, and the way your body would feel under mine.  It’s vague, and hazy, perhaps not as detailed as you, but I have thought about it, and I want the opportunity to fill in the details.  I do, Sherlock.

I wish I was there.  I’d just like to sit with you for awhile, like we used to in the old days, before everything fell apart.  I’d like to just sit quietly in our old lounge at Baker St., you in your chair, me in mine, and our feet so close between us, mere inches apart. 

Only maybe this time, I’d push my chair a little closer, and I’d slot my feet between yours, press my knee to the inside of your thigh, let our bodies find the comfortable places.  I would like to explore you there in the quiet, in the firelight. 

Just like old times, but different. 

I want to take the steps I was too frightened to take then. 

Maybe to get on my knees in front of you, let my hand linger on your thigh this time, a little longer than that night so long ago, let it wander, take it as far as I might go before you asked me to stop, or it became obvious you wanted more.  Maybe, to taste you, just to press my face to the front of your trousers, your pants, would you let me take them off, would you let me taste you, take you into my mouth, and suck you ’til you came?  I would. If you wanted it.  I would.

Would you tell me what you like?  I want to give you what you like, Sherlock, and I find it sad, and unacceptable that I don’t somehow automatically know.  I’m sure you take one look at me and know everything.  But, it’s not so easy for me, and I want to know.  So tell me, so that I can give it.

 

I love you,

John


	37. Chapter 37

  

 

 

 

 

 

 


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's just a little nsfw, in general. ;)

**Sherlock Holmes** <sholmes129@gmail.com>1:39 AM

to: _John_

 

John,

You are coming home  Home—I can hardly dare believe it.  I know you are in earnest, but still I think I must have dreamt it.  You don’t know how often I have envisioned you here, us here—together.

I have wanted you here from the start. 

From the moment I laid eyes on this cottage, I knew it was for you.  There is a bedroom on the first floor.  That is so uncommon in these old houses.  I think that it must have been a morning room before, or something of the kind, and been converted later.  But when I saw that room, I knew that it would be yours. 

You will have no need to climb the steep, narrow staircase to the upper floors when your leg aches in poor weather.  It’s why I took the room upstairs.  I left that room waiting for you.  It is yours John, or perhaps it could be ‘ours’ if you prefer.

There is the garden, of course.  It is desperate for attention, and you always seemed to have a way with those little potted herbs at the flat.  I imagine your skill in this area surpasses mine.  It was barely more than intuition, but something seemed to call to me when I first saw it.  ‘ _This is for John,_ ’ some inner voice said. 

You have a way with slightly wild and stubborn things.  Everything yields to your skill and care, everything blooms beneath your touch.  And soon you will be here, and we shall see…

Will I bloom beneath your touch?  Oh, I think so.  I long to find out.  All the things I long to explore, to discover…  So many things… 

Will you let me tell you?  You said you wanted to know. 

I’m still unsure how much is too much, or if, perhaps, my desires are too simple to satisfy you.  I want everything you have to give, and I want to give you everything you desire.  You must tell me if I get it wrong.  I will learn.  We can learn one another together.

Do you know what I would like, when you are sure, when you are ready?  I would like you to invite me to your bed.  Not in the dark of night, but in the early morning, when that room of yours will be golden, and warm, with lace-shadows of the lilac leaves outside the window dancing against the pale, cream walls and the sound of bird song drifting in from the garden.  I want you to invite me to your bed and I want you to let me worship you.

I am not a religious man, you know that, but when I used to sneak glances at your body, half-naked as you walked from the bath and up the stairs to your old room at Baker Street, the strange tugging in my chest and the way my whole body seemed to light up with something indescribable—that felt like awe, like rapture.  And I have longed, for so long now, to worship at the altar of your body.

I want to lay you out upon that bed, in that room, not a scrap of clothing, not a single coverlet or sheet. I want to look and look, until I have memorised every dip and rise, every inch of flesh, every scar, every birthmark, every follicle.  Let me memorise all the shades of navy, of sea-grey, and tea-brown within your eyes.  Let me familiarise myself with the scent of you, clean and fresh from the shower; earthy, and salt-slick, loamy earth-stained fingers, fresh in from the garden; flushed, heated, the musk of sex, the scent of our bodies mingled.

I want to anoint you with kisses—forehead, eyelids, lips, jaw, throat.  To taste your skin, tang of salt, other things I cannot yet define, as I have not had the pleasure. 

Would you let me taste you, John, catalog every inch of you?  Does, for instance, the inside of your wrist have a flavour different from the cup of your throat?  Do your lips taste sweeter than the crook of your thigh?  What new delights will I discover as I slide my tongue over each peaked nipple, what will the weight of your cock feel like against my eager tongue?

What will the length, and breadth, and strength of your limbs feel like beneath my curious hands, the rise of your arse, beneath my anxious touch.  You have an absolutely breathtaking arse, did you know?  Might I press my lips there?  Might I lay my face against you, explore your cleft with my tongue, would you allow more?  I want to have all of you John, to consume you, to pull you beneath my flesh, to hold you close, and whisper ‘mine’.

What will your body feel like flush with mine, our bodies dancing together in a rhythm I somehow feel we will have no trouble finding?  The slick slide of our cocks together, my hand wrapped around us both, perhaps, or yours, whichever you prefer, whatever you like.  Will my need mount with every twitch of your cock against my palm, every pant of your breath against my lips, every sigh, gasp, moan, until I am begging you finish it, begging for release?

One thing I know for sure.  I will gasp your name like a prayer the first time I come for you.  I know I will, John.  How long I have waited for this, how hungry I am.  And will you hold me afterwards, when my heart has slowed again, my head cleared?  Will you stay with me, so that I may know with certainty you are staying, always staying, so that I may have the reassurance of it?

It still feels like a dream, that you are coming here.  I’m almost afraid to sleep, for fear I will wake tomorrow only to find that it has been.

Home.  You are coming home, and yet— _you_ have always been my home.  You, yourself—from the moment we met, perhaps before.  I was looking for home for years before I met you, and then suddenly there you were and I knew I would never want anyone else.

You have _always_ been my home.  You _will_ always be my home.

 

I love you endlessly,

Sherlock

 


	39. Chapter 39

 

 

 

 

 

 


	40. Chapter 40

The words had been on the screen, and he’d been pressing send before he really realised what he was doing, but there’s nothing for it now, Sherlock knows, and he has wanted this, longed for this for months. 

To hear John’s voice again!

It’s ridiculous, sentimental to the extreme, but there have been nights (especially lonely ones) over the last few months, when he has watched news clips of their old cases on YouTube, just so he can hear John’s voice, see the way the corner of his mouth twitches upward in a wry and slightly dangerous smile when a reporter asks a question a little too presumptuous, a little too personal.  John’s voice matches that smile.  Tight.  Clipped short.  Sometimes it sends shivers through Sherlock’s body.  Sometimes it makes him laugh.

But that was ‘public’ John.  It’s not the same.  And this…

His hands are trembling as he taps on John’s number in his contacts, and raises the phone to his ear.  It rings once, twice…

“Hello?”  John sounds tinny with distance and a poor mobile signal, and slightly desperate, like he’s afraid it might not be Sherlock calling, like he’s about to be disappointed once again.

“Hello, John.”  Sherlock is careful to lower his voice a little, that timbre that makes John’s whole body perk up and turn toward him like a flower turning toward the sun.

John huffs out a shaky laugh that almost sounds like relief.  “Jesus—it’s good to hear your voice.”

“And yours.”  ( _awkward. stupid!_ )

The line is quiet, save for the sound of a television turned down low on John’s end of the line.  Sherlock can feel his skin begin to prickle with rising anxiety.  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  This isn’t how he’d imagined it would go.  Someone has to say something. 

It’s John who finally breaks the silence, with a nervous giggle, and it’s so good to hear that sound again, that Sherlock breathes out a chuckle of relief in return.

John sucks in a little breath.  “I don’t know what to say.  This is ridiculous.”

“Quite.”

“We lived together for two years!”

“Sixteen months, John.”  ( _pedantic.  unnecessary.  not the time._ )

“Really?  Was that all?  Seemed like more…  But yeah…  I mean, I’ve heard you vomiting and pissing, for Christ’s sake.  So, I don’t know why a simple conversation should suddenly be so…”

( _John is just as nervous then._ )

Sherlock smiles.  “Lovely.”

“Sorry, sorry!  See, I’m a mess.”

“You’re doing fine.”

Silence again.  ( _why?  why is it like this?!_ )

Finally, John sighs.  “I’m sorry about this.”

“It’s alright.”  Sherlock sits down on the sofa, curls his legs under him, and let’s Gladstone crawl into his lap.  “I’m glad you’re coming home.”

“Me too.”

“I hope the flat sells quickly.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Gladstone butts his head under the hem of Sherlock’s T-shirt to press his cold nose against his stomach and Sherlock is suddenly and irrationally irritated.  He pushes him away with a frown, before replying.  “I suppose you’ll still have the place in a few weeks for Greg and Molly’s wedding?  Am I still invited to stay?”

“What do you think?”  ( _oh.  oh…  better._ )  John’s voice has gone suggestive, he can almost hear the crooked little grin in his tone, the one that always makes Sherlock’s stomach flip. 

Some of the weight lifts and Sherlock chuckles in relief.  “It will be good to see you, John.”

“Yeah.  God, yeah.”  John sucks in a deep breath, and let’s it out in a rush.  “I wanna say I’m sorry.  I’m sorry, Sherlock.  I’m sorry it took me this long.  I’m sorry I walked away instead of trying.  I’m just—I’m sorry we’ve missed out on so much time.”

_(Unexpected…  A return of similar sentiment would be wise.)_

“It’s alright.  I’m sorry, too, John.  Sorry I didn’t see the truth of what I felt until it was too late.  I’m sorry I lied to you and kept you in the dark about the important things.  No more of that now, I promise.  And you must tell me if I do.”

“Yeah.  Sure.  And you’ll tell me if I’m shutting you out, walking away instead of staying and facing stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Well—good.”

Silence settles between them again, but this time it is less uncomfortable.  He can hear John get up from the kitchen table, walk into his lounge and flop down on the sofa.

“Sherlock?”

“Yes, John.”

There is a moment’s pause as John draws in a quavering breath.“I love you.” 

_(oh.  new.  John’s tone—a little rough, thick with emotion, heated.)_

Sherlock lights up.  S _o this is what it feels like.  This is what is feels like to be loved by John, wanted by John, and to have him tell you in no uncertain terms._ Sherlock can hardly breathe, but…   

“I love you too.”  ( _pathetic, small, laced with tears, and yet his eyes are dry.  confusing._ )  How can three words reduce him to this?

“You okay?”  He can hear the concern in John’s voice.  It’s soft.  It makes Sherlock want to breech the miles, crawl into John’s lap and curl up like a cat to be petted. ( _ridiculous!_ )

“Yes.”

“Sure?”  ( _smiling at least._ )

( _reply. reply.  reply.  stupid, traitorous words! this is not how it was meant to go.  not at all.  why is it like this?)_ And John is waiting, still waiting, patiently waiting for a reply.

“I didn’t expect it to feel this way.  We’ve said it before.  Face-to-face, and on paper.” ( _crying?  properly now.  cheeks damp?_ )

But John is smiling.  Sherlock can hear it in his voice - warm, and soft, and all the things that he had loved so much once and somehow forgot since he came back from the dead, all the lovely things that death had stolen from them both. 

“Yeah.  But it was ‘I love you’, before, not ‘I’m in love with you’.  And it’s always different in person—hearing it in someone’s voice, seeing it in someone’s eyes.  And just think!  We get to do this all over again when you come down here for the wedding in a few weeks.”

( _weeks and weeks. too many weeks…_ )

He must stay silent too long, because John speaks again, and this time the smile is gone from his voice.  “Wish I was there.”

“Me too.” ( _pathetic_ )

“Soon okay.”

“Yes.”

Gladstone is craning up to lick the tears off Sherlock’s neck, and the words are gone again.  He’s ruining this.  What ever must John think?!

“Hey…”

“I’m alright, John.”

“Sure?”

Sherlock breathes out a laugh ( _why laughter?_ )  “Not really.”

“I’ll be there soon.  You’ll be here even sooner!” 

John is trying for him.

“Yes.”

“It’s going to be brilliant, Sherlock.  Really.  You’re worrying.  You’re panicking, or something.  Don’t, okay.  It’ll be perfect.  You’ll see.”

“I’m not panicking!” ( _but yes he is, really_ )  “I’m—I’m just…  I don’t know.”

“Okay…”  All the forced cheer is gone now, and John just seems unsure.  And it’s Sherlock’s fault.  He knows this.  He’s done this, and they’ve hardly even begun.  “Well, what are you feeling?”

“I don’t know, John!”  ( _snapping._   _not good.  stop!_ )

“Alright!  Jesus.”

( _stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid_ )

“Sorry.”

“Yeah.  Okay.  It’s okay.”  The gentleness is back in John’s voice, so Sherlock must have sounded adequately penitent.  Good…  “Just talk to me.  What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”  ( _throat tight.  chest aching.  pulse heightened.  tension in neck and shoulders.  eyes burning.  mouth dry._ )  “I don’t know what I’m feeling.”

“Can you describe it?”  ( _John thinks he’s a fragile thing.  John is worried.  tip-toeing about.  over-cautious.  it’s all wrong._ )

“It just hurts.”

“Maybe you just miss me.”  ( _smiling, but sad._ )

“I do.  I do, John.  Every day.  Every moment.”

“I miss you too.  But, let’s stick to the plan, yeah?  I know it’s hard, but just think of how much better we’ll know one another by the wedding!  All the extra emails, and texts, and calls.  Think about what it’s going to be like when you’re finally here.  We’ll have that damn tedious wedding to attend, true…”  Sherlock laughs in spite of himself, and John is smiling again as he continues.   “But, we’ll also have all that time together—just us.  Maybe try out some of the stuff you talk about in those emails you keep sending, hm?”  ( _flirtatious, but careful._ )

“Maybe.”  ( _cheeks hot.  blushing.  immature.  ridiculous._ )

“You gonna get shy on me?”  ( _shyness pleases John somehow.  unexpected._ )

“No!”

John chuckles.  It sounds like heaven.  “It’s fine.  It’s all fine, okay.  We’ll figure it out.  It’s going to be so amazing to lay eyes on you again.”

( _wedding.  oh!  day wedding.  light coloured suit—or navy.  colour of John’s eyes, yes.  bespoke.  fitted to best advantage.  yes.  excellent._ )

“What are you wearing?”

“What?  Right now?”  ( _john is nervous.  why?_ )

“No, no, to the wedding!”

“Oh!”  ( _now relieved.  why?_ )  “I don’t know.  I’ve not given it much thought.”

“It’s a day wedding and day suits are acceptable.  I’ll have to wear a tie, I suppose…  But, you’ve no grey or navy suits.”

John barks out a laugh.  “How do you know that?”

( _obvious_ ) 

“I just do.  So, you’ll have to purchase one.  There’s a little bespoke place in Soho, I’ve used in a pinch.  The owner knows me.  At six weeks it’s an awful scramble, but mention my name and he’ll rush the fittings.  I’ll text you the address.

“Molly’s having the bridesmaids in satsuma orange—heaven knows why—and the men in dove grey.  So summer navy for you, I think.  It will look well with your eyes.  I’ll text Mark the details, your measurements.  Have you put on weight since I moved here?”

“You’re dressing me now, then?”  John teases. ( _is he flirting?_ )

Sherlock sighs.  “It’s logical, John.  Mark’s very good and he owes me a favour.  Well—several actually.”

“And how much is _Mark_ going to charge me for this wonder of a suit?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.  He owes me, as I said.  It will all be taken care of.”

“Sherlock, you’re not paying for this out of your own pocket, are you?”

( _not good?_ )

“Sherlock!”  ( _tone!!  that tone.  lovely.  it’s been an age…_ )

Sherlock sighs again, because John likes it when he pretends to be put upon. “It’s at a considerable discount, John, and there’s no reason for you to be spending money with a move on the horizon.  Besides, I’ve more money than I know what to do with since Mycroft’s estate settled in the Spring.”

“Sherlock, I…”

“Oh, do stop complaining, John.  It’s not as though you’re the only one to benefit in this situation.”

( _good.  flirting back is good.  speechless John is even better._ )

“Are you saying this is all just because you want to see my arse in a pair of bespoke trousers.”

( _John is pleased.  say nothing.  heighten impact._ )

“Oh my God!  It is!”  ( _definitely pleased_ )

“Possibly…” ( _feigned innocence_ )

John laughs.  “Christ, I love you.”

( _success!_ )

“I love you too”

“Listen, I hate to do this, but like an idiot I promised to fill in a half shift for Verner at the clinic and I’ve got to run.”

“Do you?”  ( _failure to hide disappointment.  not good._ )

“Yeah.  Sorry.  Email me, though, okay.  I love your emails.”

“I will then.”  ( _better._ )

“Can’t wait!  Give Gladstone a scratch behind the ears for me.  I’ll talk to you tonight when I get back, okay.”

“You’ll call?”  ( _so ridiculously eager._ )

“Yeah, if you like.”

“I do.  Please, John.”  ( _begging now?!)_

“Sure, I will.  Promise.”

“Alright.”

“Gotta run.  Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

“Bye.”

And just like that it’s over.

Sherlock’s heart plummets.  It’s ludicrous.  This is—it’s all so unexpected, inconvenient.  Emotion flooding him, washing all his plans away with it.  He’d had it all figured out, exactly how it would go the first time John permitted him to call.  He would be casual, lightly flirtatious, open, clear about his desires, but not come on too strong.  He would be charming.

Instead…

Embarrassment.  Like a school boy with a crush.  Unacceptable. 

What must John think?

Hmm…

That bears analysis. 

Though, thinking requires fuel.  He hasn’t eaten since yesterday.  John would be displeased.  He can think and make a sandwich.  Then he will email John as promised.

 


	41. Chapter 41

**Sherlock Holmes** <sholmes129@gmail.com>11:26 AM

to: _John_

 

John,

It was lovely to hear your voice this morning.

I do apologise for—well, I hadn’t expected to be so affected.  I’d not realised until I heard it, how deeply I had been missing you.  The moment I heard your hello, I was instantly transported back nearly three years, to those golden days, forever memorialised in my memory as the best months of my life.  Sixteen months in which it was, for the most part, just you and me at Baker Street.  How I long to have those days again.

I have decided to start preparing your room.  You do want the room on the ground floor, don’t you?  It is a lovely room.  plenty of windows to let the sea breezes in, and looking out to the garden.  The bed is larger too, and I will buy a new mattress.  The one there is very soft, and I remember you prefer a firm one.  There is also a fireplace in the room, so you will have added heat in the winter.  It was still quite cold the first of April when I came here, and the hearth in the lounge was invaluable as an extra source of heat.

I think that Gladstone’s come down with a case of fleas after his adventure with the vicar.  He has been scratching all morning.  I suppose he will have to have another bath and flea treatment.  He will _love_ that.  I suppose I will have another couple of days of being ignored to look forward to.

I’m prevaricating.  This is just small talk, and not at all what I want to say.  All I can think is: _John, John, John…_   I don’t want to stick to the plan.  The plan is quite unbearable.  I want to be with you now.  Do you still need time, space?  Do you really?

This is wholly selfish, but I cannot bear the thought of another night under this roof without your presence here.  I want to wake in the morning, and see you in your chair by the fire, bring you a cup of tea, sit across from you, and just look at you.  I want the sound of you in the house, your footfall on the floor boards, your whistling as you putter about the kitchen, your muttering at the newspaper or television. 

I want to look out at the garden, and smile at you scolding Gladstone as he does his best to undo all the work you’ve just done. I want the warmth and comfort of you beside me when I go out on little cases.  I crave your companionship.  It is lonely here, John, even if it is beautiful.

And yes, I want the sound of your breath, in the dark, beside me.  Might I share your bed now and again?  And by that I mean spend the the whole of the night with you, even if it is just to sleep?  I don’t want to assume.  Tell me you wouldn’t mind.  I do long to know what it is like to sleep the whole night through with you beside me.

Well, I should go give Gladstone his bath.  I hope your afternoon at the clinic isn’t too tedious.  Call me the moment you get back.

 

All my love,

Sherlock

 


	42. Chapter 42

 


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is completely new.

Moving all the way out to the arse end of nowhere may not have been one of Sherlock’s finer ideas… 

There had been no cabs when John arrived in Eastbourne, and he had had to take the bus into East Dean, and then walk through field and pasture, almost 10 minutes from the village green to Sherlock’s house on Crowlink Lane. 

Yes ‘house’.  Sherlock has clearly never seen a cottage, because the house that had loomed before John as he strolled up the gravel road, was by no means small enough to be considered a cottage.  He’d had to check his phone twice to make sure the address was correct.  Leave it to Sherlock to buy something this posh and think it simple living.

But now there is the sound of a puppy barking, and glimpses of wildly overgrown plant life and active bee colonies in the back garden, and John is sure he’s found the right place.  He sends a text to announce his arrival. 

The curtains in the front window part and then drop again, and after a few seconds more, the front door flies open letting loose a little auburn dog that bolts toward John and immediately lunges itself at his shins with yips, and wiggles, and whines.  John laughs and crouches down to subdue it with a firm hand to the back of the neck.  “Hey you!  Calm down now.  Calm down…”  Gladstone submits, rolling onto his back to show his belly while still vibrating under John’s touch.  Finally, John looks up at the home’s other occupant and smiles.  His chest aches with the joy of the familiarity of that face, and of finally, finally being back where he belongs. 

Sherlock is standing in the doorway, slightly pale, mouth agape and eyes full.  His hair is longer than John can ever recall seeing it, fringe flopping down over his eyebrows, curls tucked behind his ears and dipping low to lick about the sides of his neck.  The worn, grey, cotton trousers, cuffed at the bottom, the bare feet and subtly-checked, marine-blue button-down, sleeves rolled up to expose bare, lightly tanned forearms all suggest a sort of casual, relaxed mood that John doesn’t think he’s ever seen on ‘London Sherlock’ before.  It’s Sherlock and yet somehow it’s not.  Or maybe it’s just a Sherlock John’s never had the chance to meet as of yet.  The thought of that is a little thrilling, that there is still so much they don’t know about one another, so much to explore and discover.

John gets to his feet leaving the dog free to squirm to it’s feet and bolt back inside.  Sherlock closes the door behind him, and then slumps against it. 

“Surprise.”  John grins.

Sherlock says nothing—just stares and blinks.  The tears that had been building in his eyes spill over, and John’s smile softens.  It yanks tight at something in the centre of his chest.  “Hope this was okay.  I just—on the phone earlier, you just sounded so…  I wanted to come.  Seemed like it was time.”

Sherlock swallows tightly, a muscle twitching in his jaw.  His knuckles have turned almost white from gripping the edge of door frame. 

Time to do something, then.  Dusting his hands on the legs of his trousers, John takes the last few steps necessary to bridge the gap between them. 

Sherlock is trembling.  John notices it the minute he steps onto the stoop.  “Hey.  You okay?  Was a bit rude springing it on you like this, I know.  I just…”  The words catch in his throat, somehow familiar, but he can’t for the life of him think of why.  All he knows is that Sherlock has gone paler still.

John reaches out a hand and Sherlock’s knees buckle at the gesture, and that’s what brings them together at last. 

“Hey, come here.  I’m sorry.”

Sherlock sinks into his arms—instantly relieved as John wraps his arms around his waist, pulls him close.  His breath hitches once, and then he’s pulling John in closer, tighter.  It’s a hug almost fierce in it’s desperation, like he can’t believe John’s real, like he’s trying to keep him from vanishing before his eyes. 

“John…”  breathed into his hair.  “John?”

“Yeah, it’s me.  This was stupid maybe.  I just wanted to surprise you.”

“No. It—it’s good.  It’s good.”  Sherlock’s arms tighten around him.  It’s almost suffocating, but Christ it feels good—grounding.  John hasn’t felt this right in months.

“Missed you too much.  Had to come.”

“I missed you too, John.  So much.”

They fall quiet.  It’s comfortable.  Sherlock doesn’t seem to want to let go and John has no objections.  He’s never had this much access to Sherlock’s affections, not like this, not so free and unfettered—no pretence, no excuses, just everything they’ve always wanted to say and never seemed to find the words for coming out in pure action.

John presses up onto his tiptoes and Sherlock takes the opportunity to bury his face in the crook of John’s neck.  “I wasn’t sure you’d come here, in the end.  I thought you might change your mind after all.”

John suppresses a shiver of unexpected pleasure at the sensation of Sherlock’s tear-wet lips whispering against his skin.  He reaches up to card his fingers through the hair at the back of his neck and feels Sherlock go boneless against him.  “Where else would I go, hmm?  Who else would I ever want to be with?  I’m an idiot.  It shouldn’t have taken me this long.”

Sherlock nods against his shoulder.  “You are an idiot.”

“Oi!”  John laughs and pulls away.  Sherlock is smiling and his cheeks are flushed bright pink.  It’s the best thing John’s ever seen.

“You are.  You wanted to come.  You should have come a long time ago.”

“Yeah… Fair enough.”

“I should invite you in, I suppose.”

“Yeah, unless you were planning on having me live in the shed.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, John.”  There’s no venom in it.  Sherlock is grinning ear-to-ear.  John’s not sure he’s ever seen him this happy.  It’s nice to know he’s not alone in being so affected.

“Well, go on then.  Show me this _cottage_.”

“Why are you saying it like that?”

“Sherlock this is hardly a cottage.”

“Well, it’s cottage-y.”  John laughs, and Sherlock smiles more brightly.  “What do you want to see first?  Garden or house?”

“Bees, I think.  That’s what you’re dying to show me, isn’t it?”

 

* * *

 

 It was, as it turned out.Sherlock had insisted John suit up, and then spent a good half hour explaining how he had been maintaining the health of the hive throughout the summer, what would be required for harvest in the coming weeks, how he would need John’s assistance in winterising the hives come late autumn, as it was likely to be a cold winter.

His eyes were bright and eager.  He had talked a mile a minute and John had let him, simply for the pure joy of seeing him excited about something again, hearing him expound on all the little details and minutia that others seemed to care little about.  He’d listened with interest about beekeeping history in ancient Egypt as they’d unsuited and toured the rest of the garden and the work shed.  He’d nodded and hummed in reply to snippets of bee-related folklore as Sherlock showed him through each and every room of the country house they would soon share. 

And then he had smiled and pulled Sherlock close again, when he’d finally run out of things to say, when he’d stood blinking and slightly disoriented in the middle of the kitchen as though suddenly realising where he actually was, that the sun was swiftly setting, and that John was actually and truly there, grinning up at him, eyes and heart overflowing with fondness.

“I talked about the bees too much.”

“No.”

“You’re bored.”

“No.”

“It’s time for supper.”

“Yes it is.”

“I don’t have anything in.  I didn’t know you were coming.”

“I bet I can pull something together.”

“The pea thing?”

John laughs.  “The shepherd’s pie?”

“Yes.That.”

“Could do, if you have everything we need.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we can look.”

Sherlock is staring, just staring.  “You’re here.”

John smiles, and nods.  “Yeah.  Did you forget?”

“No.  Sometimes I—I talk to you when you aren’t here.  I think I’m still worried that this is that.”

John shakes his head.  “No.  I’m here.”  He pulls back a little, and reaches for Sherlock’s hand, takes it in both of his and rubs his thumbs soothingly over the top.  “See.  I’m here.”

“Could be my mind playing tricks.”

“You think?”

“Mmm…”  Sherlock is looking down at his pale held between John’s two smaller ones.

“What would help.”

Sherlock just shrugs.

“I _am_ here.  I’m glad I’m here.”

Sherlock is still staring down at their entwined hands, but he nods in acknowledgement.

“Hey…  Can you look at me for a second.”

Sherlock’s head snaps up.  “Yes.  Sorry.”

“You seem anxious.”

Sherlock frowns, mildly indignant.  “I’m not.”

“Sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure.  Don’t be stupid.”

John steps back and raises both brows in warning.  Some things haven’t changed all that much, apparently.

Sherlock looks properly chastised.  “Sorry.”

“Yeah, well good.  Listen, if it helps at all, I’m a little nervous too.  I kind of—well, I thought about as far as getting here, and not past that.  I’m not sure how you want this to work.  I need to go back to London, you know.”

“What?  Why?”

“Well, I can’t just leave the flat sitting empty.  There will be showings, and I need to figure out what I’m going to do with my things.”

Sherlock waves a hand dismissively.  “Oh, just set a match to it all, John.  It doesn’t matter anymore.”

John scowls.  “It matters to me.  I have things there, memories.  There’s—there’s things of Gemma’s there.”

Sherlock takes brief stock of his stiff posture and tight frown, before turning on his heel and walking over to yank open the fridge.  “Yes.  Well, I just meant that I’d prefer that you stay, and there are people who can do those sorts of things for you, John.  I don’t know why you think you need to go back to London.  If you’ve come here only to abandon me again at the slightest provocation, I don’t know why you bothered to come at all.”

“What?”

“It’s fine.  I—I misunderstood.  It doesn’t matter.”  Slamming the fridge door shut, he reaches down and pulls open the freezer.  “Does the meat have to be thawed, you think?  It doesn’t matter if we’re just frying it up, does it?”

“Hey.”  John stride’s forward, and takes Sherlock by the arm.  “Don’t do that.  Don’t just change the subject when I…”

Sherlock pushes the freezer drawer shut with his foot with some force and swings around, eyes slightly wild and full to brimming all over again.  “When you what?!”

John blinks in shock.  “It’s just temporary—going back to London.  I—I’m staying.  You know that, right.  I mean—I don’t want to be anywhere else, with anyone else, Sherlock.  My being here now is a choice.  I’m choosing you.  I’m choosing us.”

Sherlock sucks in a sharp breath, and looses his battle with tears for the second time that day.  “If you think you might change your mind, John, then it’s better you leave now.  Just leave me and go.”

“What are you talking about?!  I just said…”

“I can’t—I can’t do this, I…”

A knot of something cold and sick twists in the pit of John’s stomach.  “What?”

“If you leave now, I won’t—I couldn’t, and I didn’t know it would be like this.  I didn’t know it would feel like this when you were here, I thought—I thought I could…  I had a plan, and it’s…”

“Sherlock…”

“It’s all—wrong, John!  I thought that if you were just here, I would know what to do, how to keep you, or if you left again it would be alright because we had this, at least this, some time where we were each other’s, and if you left then, I would…”

“Sherlock.”

“I could say that at least I’d had the chance, that at least for a little while I had known what it would be like to love…”

“Sherlock!”  John strides forward, and does the only thing he seems good at, capable of, since he showed up earlier in the afternoon.  He pulls Sherlock firm and tight against his body, and he holds on tight.  “Stop.”

Sherlock breathes out a small sob, maybe of exhaustion, maybe of desperation, or maybe (hopefully) of relief.

“I don’t know what this is, okay.  You’re panicking, I think.  Listen, I’m here.  I’m staying.  I thought I’d stay until Sunday.  Then I have to go back and pack some things, check in with my estate agent and try and figure out what I’m going to do with all the stuff in that flat I don’t want.  That’s not me running away.  That’s me dealing with all the boring but necessary stuff that’s got to be done. 

“Trust me, I don’t want to go back there.  I’ve been here just a little over three hours, and I already don’t want to leave.  In my heart I’m staying.  You have me.  The rest is just—practicalities.  You’ve got to stop panicking.”

“I can’t lose you.”  Sherlock sounds small, lost.

John swallows hard against the tightness in his throat and the sudden bite at the corners of his eyes.  “Well good,” he somehow manages.  “‘Cause I can’t lose you either.”  And then he’s stretching up, weaving his fingers in Sherlock’s hair and pulling him down until their lips meet. 

It was meant to be respectful, chaste, their first kiss—just a taste of things to come.  John had thought it through a lot on the hour long train ride to Eastbourne.  Respectful of Sherlock’s inexperience, but still expressive and clear in intent.  Tender.  Decisive.  A suggestion of where they might eventually go.  But really, he should have known better… This is Sherlock after all, and Sherlock is nothing if not surprising. 

The minute their lips meet, Sherlock sucks in a small gasp of surprise, followed by a moan so electric it causes all the blood in John’s head to race instantly south.  His head goes light, knees buckle.  Not that it matters, because Sherlock has only tightened his grip around his back, he’s holding him up just fine as his lips part and his tongue slides along the seam of John’s lips.  John opens to him, instantly, of course he does, and then he’s lost in wet heat, and panting breaths, and hands clinging to the back of his shirt, fisting the fabric, pulling, pulling until the hem comes free from beneath the waistband of John’s trousers and Sherlock slips his hands beneath.  They’re burning hot, and trembling, and so large. 

That’s the thing that stands out most.  How had John not noticed before?  How had he not thought to dwell on how it might feel to have both of Sherlock’s hands, palms down, fingers splayed, pressed against the whole of his back, holding him up, holding him close while he kisses him breathless. 

It’s a full body revelation, the way every cell wakes up, the way his body responds in ways it never has before.  He feels like he’s slipping out of himself, almost, like the brain-body connection is being rewired with each gentle knead of Sherlock’s finger tips against his back, with each hot, moist pant against his lips, with each eager twitch of Sherlock’s burgeoning erection against his belly through layers of fabric.

Whatever disconnect or difficulty John may have experienced in crossing this line in the past, it seems his brain has decided that those rules don’t apply here, not with Sherlock, not with so much history and explicit trust between them.  ‘ _Because you love him_ ,’ some part of his brain offers.  ‘ _You’ve always loved him._ ”  And so he does.  So he does…

Sherlock’s lips leave his to travel messily along the line of his jaw, until his nose slips up behind the shell of John’s ear.  His hips cant almost involuntarily against John’s thigh and he whines.  Another rush of blood races to John’s cock, and really does feel dizzy now, it’s ridiculous.  He should really check his blood-pressure, because…

“Oh Christ!”

He feels the hot press of Sherlock’s lips against the sensitive spot behind his ear spread into a smile at the exclamation.  “Mmm…”

John shivers at the hum against his skin, at the sensation of Sherlock’s lips beginning to travel down the side of his neck, to the crook of his shoulder.  He’s overcome.  He’s falling.  He’s—he’s…  “Come here, come back up here.”

Sherlock pulls back instantly, lips pink, swollen and lax, eyes round with concern.  “Too much?  Not good?”

“No, no.  Perfect,” John reassures.  “I just…  I need to catch my breath.”

“Oh.”  Sherlock bounces slightly on the ball of his feet, looking anywhere but at John.  It’s clear he’s at a loss now that they’ve parted.

“Come back over here, ‘kay.”  So Sherlock does.  He let’s John wrap his arms back around his waist and pull him in close.  “Where’d you learn to kiss like that, hmm?”

The corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitches upward a little.  “I’m not a child, John.”

John cocks a brow.  “You’ve been swotting up on snogging?”

“Seemed pertinent to the developing situation.”  John chuckles, and Sherlock sobers.  “It was alright, though?”

“Oh god, yes!”

“Good.”  And then Sherlock’s nose is buried in John’s hair again, and his arms are wrapping him up warm.

John feels his racing pulse slow, the arousal that was so hot, so insistent between them a few minutes ago begin to mellow.  He feels sleepy.  “You still want supper?”

“Maybe.”

“I think Gladstone does.”

They both look down at the pup who has been pacing and circling them almost franticly since the moment they came together in the middle of the kitchen.

“You’re a menace.  Go lay down,” Sherlock pouts.

Gladstone barks once in response, and John laughs.  “He wants to be fed.  I told you.”

Sherlock growls a little in mild frustration, and finally breaks away.  “Fine.  Fine, I’ll feed you.”

John watches Sherlock walk into the pantry.  He can hear him shuffling around, talking to the dog in low tones, just quiet enough that John can’t make out the words, but it’s clear from the tone that he’s giving Gladstone a lecture.  After a minute or two he reappears, and starts a little at the sight of John leaning up against the counter staring.

“What?”

“You.”

“What about me?”

“I just…”  The words catch in John’s throat.  “I’d forgotten how much I like hearing you about the house.”

“Oh.”  It’s small, and quiet, and just a little shy.

“Come here.”  Sherlock comes willingly, slides up against his body, fits perfectly.  “Can I kiss you?”

“You just did.”

“Yeah, but…  I kind of wanna do it again.  I—I had our first kiss all planned out.”

“You did?”  Sherlock seems pleased if not a little surprised.

“Yeah.  Thought about it all the way here, and then—well things just sort of got wildly away from me, didn’t they.”

“Sorry.  I shouldn’t have…”

“No, no.  Sherlock.  No.  I loved it.  I loved that.  I’m not saying it was wrong, okay.  I’m just saying—I don’t know.  I just want to give you the kiss I’d planned.  That okay?”

Sherlock’s eyes are glistening, but he looks curious, eager.  He nods.

Pushing up onto his toes, John reaches up, cups Sherlock’s face in his hands, and searches his eyes as his thumbs trace along each cheekbone.  Something in the back of his head says this is unforgivably twee, that Sherlock isn’t a school girl, that at any minute he is sure to laugh at how simple, how saccharine John’s expressions of sentiment are, but he doesn’t.  He just goes very still, gazes back in that intense way he has, the one that makes John feel like he is reaching inside him and reading, seeing everything—every doubt, every secret, every hidden fear.

John licks his lips.  “I love you.”

Sherlock’s eyes fill.

“I love you so much that I can’t breathe sometimes.  I feel that if I lost you again I would come undone.  I would, Sherlock.  I know I would, and it scares me.  But—we have now, and I want every second of now to have you in it from now on, okay.  I love you, and I need you, and I want you in my life.  I want us together.”

A tear escapes to cling to the bottom of Sherlock’s lashes.  He nods.

John slips a hand around the back of Sherlock’s neck, guides his head down, presses their foreheads together.  Sherlock’s eyes slide shut, as their breath mingles.  “I’m going to kiss you now.”

Sherlock nods again, and John tilts his head just a little to the side, presses up, presses his lips against Sherlock’s, closed, soft but firm, almost chaste but rapt with feeling.  They stay that way, breathing together, trembling against one another, for what seems like an age, and when John finally deepens the kiss, when his lips begin to move against Sherlock’s, Sherlock matches him step-by -step, a perfect dance of intimacy, of tenderness, trust and need.

It’s never been like this before—a kiss.  It’s never felt like a promise, and a declaration, and a vow.  Can you will yourself to someone with a kiss?  John has declared wedding vows in front of god and man, but he has never given himself like this.  And he’s not alone.  Sherlock is giving back in kind, and neither of them seems keen to stop.

The sun has fully set when they finally part, the dog’s insistent scratching to be let out the thing that finally breaks through the haze.  And John knows—he knows without a shadow of a doubt that this is it.  There never has been and there never will be anything else for him but this.  Sherlock has always been his home, and he has no idea why he’s been running from it for so long.


End file.
